


the more things change (the more they stay the same)

by dandelionlighters



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Slow Burn, Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 20:43:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 75,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20730467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionlighters/pseuds/dandelionlighters
Summary: “Our project for this semester will be dealing with desiderio potum, otherwise known as the desire drink. However, you guys might more commonly recognize it as the supernatural world’s love potion.”—Hope Mikaelson and Josie Saltzman are assigned to work on a school project together, which involves a rather deceptive love potion. After days of abnormal shifts in her mood and unusual feelings of infatuation, Hope begins to suspect that she’s been dosed. Or maybe, it’s something else.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hope's point of view is in second person, hope you enjoy :)

Your orange juice tastes too bitter going down your throat this morning. Maybe it’s the fact that you woke up early to get breakfast, or that when you arrived to the dining hall it was already crowded despite how early you got up. It’s possibly the fact that you’re sitting alone, the nearest student a couple yards away from you.

It’s more likely the fact that Josie Saltzman is sitting a couple of tables across from you laughing with Penelope Park. It shouldn’t make you miserable, but it does in some selfish way that you could never confess out loud.

You watch as Josie places a steadying hand on Penelope’s shoulder, throwing her head back in a way that scorches your throat when you take another gulp of orange juice.

  
You abandon the drink altogether when they share the kind of smile that has jealousy crawling at your nerve endings, so you get up to start heading for your first class of the day—Traditional Magic.

The class doesn’t start for another twenty minutes, so you wait outside the room until the bell rings. When you walk in, a dangerous scent meets your nose that almost intoxicates you. You try to ignore it, heading for your usual seat in the class. Your classmates make their way in casually, and you try not to stiffen when Josie and Lizzie walk in.

This is one of the classes you share with the both of them. You notice a small purple handkerchief covering an unknown object on the teacher’s—Dorian Williams—desk at the front.

  
In the corner of your eye, you see Josie and Lizzie take their seats at the front together.

“Okay, everyone, today we’re starting our semester projects!” Dorian attempts cheerfully, and everyone in the room groans all at once. No one seems thrilled with the idea. _You_ certainly aren’t. 

“Even better, it’s a partner project!” The entire class but you lightens up somewhat at that, but it doesn’t stay that way for much longer.

“However, I’m picking partners.” The class groans again, and then Dorian starts pairing people up. You haven’t been paying attention when Lizzie Saltzman randomly stands up and starts to gasp loudly. Dramatically. 

“You can’t do that!” she says, and you start to laugh under your breath.

“Really, Liz, it’s fine,” Josie mutters, desperately trying to calm her down, which makes you frown a little. You don’t really understand until Dorian repeats his statement.

“Josie, please find your seat next to Hope.”

Oh, you think. Any resemblance of the laughter you were biting down before is completely choked down, and your eyes meet Josie’s for a fraction of a second.

She looks away quickly, but your eyes are still drawn to her. You drag them away after a long moment, wondering why your throat suddenly seems so dry. 

Josie pulls out the empty chair next to you and quietly sits down.

At first, you had been almost elated to be paired up with her, but now all you can feel is anger because she’s clearly disappointed.

You shake your head silently, swallowing to no avail to rid yourself of the lump in your throat. That’s why it had been so dry seconds ago. 

“Okay, now that that’s done...” Dorian starts again, once everyone has been paired and he’s ready to get everything started.

“Our project for this semester will be dealing with desiderio potum, otherwise known as the desire drink. However, you guys might more commonly recognize it as the supernatural world’s love potion.”

Dorian removes the thin material covering the flask that you noticed earlier, and the entire class sits up straighter. The aroma you’ve been smelling since you walked into the room is more prominent now, and you can’t quite help the inhale that escapes you. A unique scent of a mixture of vanilla, cinnamon, and green tea invades your senses, causing you to breathe deeply again.

Josie shifts in the seat next to you—your supernatural hearing automatically adjusting to discern her breathing pattern. It’s somewhat normal, and combined with her radiating magic and body heat, you feel oddly hot. Your hand trembles underneath the desk, and the heart convulsing beneath your chest quivers with a quickness you can’t explain.

“Desiderio potum can replicate feelings of love and devotion in its participants, but can also cause terrible side effects and have dangerous consequences when brewed incorrectly, so it’s important that you pay attention when you start to make it tomorrow,” Dorian continues, and all your classmates are hanging onto his every word, clearly more interested in the project than they were before.

“These side effects include further aggravating present feelings of affection, rapid obsession, and sometimes even causing suicidal thoughts.” Dorian lifts the bottle up slightly, which makes everyone lean in slowly.

The liquid inside the glass itself is a light purple color, beautifully accentuating the handkerchief that’s covering it.

“This version was brewed correctly, but I also have some that I did incorrectly to show you.” He pulls out a couple of small vials, and the scent that you’ve been smelling most of the class period is stronger now. He holds up the first one, which is slightly more gray than the original purple color.

“This right here is an example of something that can drastically worsen current emotions for someone that you might have feelings for. It actually gives off a unique smell to its user—the fragrance of whoever they have feelings for. However, witches can’t sense it—only supernatural creatures like vampires and werewolves can detect this smell, so they’re usually the ones that fall prey to it.”

The effect is instantaneous; all the witches in the room look in your direction quickly, and it becomes obvious that the potion was the reason you’d been sniffing like some fucking dog the entire time.

“Miss Mikaelson,” Dorian calls your name, and you’re pretty sure this is a form of student-teacher bullying. “Would you mind telling the class what you smell?”

Your eyes immediately betray you, glancing directly at Josie beside you, and you want to cringe in humiliation.

  
  
“Nothing,” you lie, the truth of vanilla and tea sitting heavy on your tongue. When Josie shifts next to you again, your hands don’t tremble.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you everyone for your comments :)

Dorian looks at you like he doesn’t quite believe you, but he doesn’t say anything. You can feel Josie’s eyes burning into the side of your head—and her curiosity is almost endearing, but you could never admit that out loud—but you keep your head down.

  
Dorian pulls out the second incorrectly-made potion, and murmurs start to ring throughout the class.

The liquid is a pool of silvery black, a violent contrast to the light purple it’s supposed to be.

  
  
“This is an example of the more severe consequences. Drinking from this will cause you to dreadfully obsess over the object of your affections. Drinking more than a teaspoon of it will drive you into a state of insanity and paranoia—it will drastically change your behavior, and will cause you to have a hard time focusing. If you see your potion taking on this dark color, give it to me immediately so I can get rid of it. Do not throw it away yourself. If it explodes, anyone within a small radius will be affected.”

The mood of the classroom instantly worsens with Dorian’s solemn words. You think for a moment that Josie has even stopped breathing, but when you listen again she sounds fine. Her hands are still on top of the table, but she suddenly moves them into her lap, which cause your own to twitch. It’d be so easy to just reach out, you think.

“In addition to those symptoms, over time, you can develop suicidal tendencies and it will sometimes result in death. However, there is an antidote, so if you feel like you are experiencing any of these side effects, please come see me quickly.”

  
Dorian starts to walk around the classroom as he talks, and his footsteps are almost unsettling compared to the stillness of the room.

“Desiderio potum takes at least one week to brew once you cast the finishing spell. You will not have to worry about killing anything, as the drink is one of the only time-consuming spells that doesn’t involve animal sacrifice.”

You notice that some of the vegetarian and vegan witches in the room are sighing in relief, and the smirk that grows on your face is uncontrollable.

“Tomorrow, I will provide the base ingredients for the potion, but it will be up to you and your partner to find the rest of them in the next weeks.”

Dorian starts to hand out an ingredient list, and looking at it, you think the task seems almost impossible.

  
  
“Sir?” Casey, one of the witches, speaks up. At Dorian’s nod, she continues speaking. “How can we be expected to gather these ingredients? For example...” Casey glances quickly at the list again. “Six purple sunflower seeds?”

“Well, we do have a beautiful forest surrounding our school.” Dorian smiles, and something like anger itches at your veins.

“It’s dangerous.” You didn’t realize you had spoken until everyone in the room looks at you again. But it’s true. You know _exactly_ how dangerous that forest can be.

“I understand this, but I know that you guys are more than capable of finding all of these ingredients. And they’re pretty expensive, so I didn’t want to buy them when they’re all right on our campus in abundant supply.”

You don’t say anything back, even though the violent voice in your mind is begging you to.

“Okay, now that that’s settled...” Dorian sighs, looking around the room. “I’ll give you some time before the bell rings to talk to your partner and decide on times to go to the forest together.”

The second he stops talking the class erupts into conversation, but you and Josie don’t immediately start talking. When she turns around in her chair and finally opens her mouth, you find yourself already speaking.

  
  
“I’ll just get everything. Don’t worry about it,” you say, something heavy snapping desperately in your chest.

“Hope, I—“ she tries, but the bell has already rung, and you’re already gone.

For the rest of the day, you can’t seem to concentrate—the only thing you can focus on is the way she had said your name.

You’re infuriated with yourself as your last class ends, your nails digging incessantly into your sides as you curse yourself in your head.

You were rude, that’s unquestionable, and now you’re paying for it. You wish you had been nicer, but you don’t see a different way this could have ended.

You always mess everything up for yourself, you have no friends, and Josie hates you. These words are a repeating mantra in your head, torturing you almost the entire day. 

You spend only thirty minutes harshly chastising yourself in your room when you decide to just get the scavenger hunt over with—since you can’t stop thinking about it. You grab the ingredient list from your backpack, and you open your door to start heading to the forest.

  
You’re almost outside the school when Lizzie Saltzman catches you. You try to hide the list in your hand but she’s already seen it.

  
“Oh my god,” she laughs. “You’re not seriously going to the forest right now.”

You contemplate imitating her and repeating the sentence, but mocking her will definitely not get you to the forest faster so you keep your mouth shut.

“Without Josie?” she prods, like she’s trying to get all the details to completely get you in trouble. “Wait ‘til Dorian hears about this.”

“It’s not safe for her,” you try, firmly believing it but it sounds like a weak reason to your own ears. Josie can take care of herself, but you’d rather she didn’t need to.

“Yeah, it’s not safe for anyone,” Lizzie points out, like it’s obvious. “That’s why we’re supposed to go in pairs.”

“Whatever,” you tell her, and you move to go past her. This time she doesn’t stop you.

You’re probably the scariest thing in that damn forest.

Once you’re past the forest’s tree line, you take a look at the ingredient list. It’s almost formed like a baking recipe.

1\. 5 Tablespoons of Natural Honey  
2\. 3 One-Inch Pieces of Bloodwood Tree Bark  
3\. Six Purple Sunflower Seeds  
4\. One Handful of Monkshood  
5\. 4 Inches of Shedded Rattlesnake Skin  
6\. 2 Eucalyptus Petals  
7\. One Lamb’s Ear  
8\. 3 Teaspoons of Rainwater  
9\. 2 Pale-Tipped Killdeer Feathers  
10\. One handful of Ash Grass

There’s a note on the bottom that says the rest of the ingredients will be provided in class, which lets you relax a little.

The wolfsbane, or monkshood, scares you a little bit, but you’ve dealt with it before, and the pain always goes away.

You cheat and use easy locator spells for at least half of the ingredients, but no one will ever find out so you’re not bothered.

Lamb’s ear is not actually a lamb’s ear, thank god, but a plant instead.

When you get to the Bloodwood tree, you see that the list specified three one-inch pieces of bark, but you don’t have a fucking ruler so you just peel a bunch of them off the tree. The tree starts bleeding, which creeps you out and makes you feel a little bit bad, but you move on quickly.

It’s not raining, so you don’t bother with the rainwater or anything liquid since you didn’t bring any bottles.

The grass and eucalyptus petals are actually the easiest to find, but the Killdeer feathers and Rattlesnake skin proves difficult.

When you perform the locator spell for the Purple Sunflower, you find that it’s actually pretty far, but you don’t have the energy to change to your wolf form so you just start walking faster.

On your way you find a wolfsbane plant next to a tree, which is a little weird. Your hand starts to throb with the knowledge that touching the plant will hurt, but someone has to get it.

You wonder why Dorian has you all getting wolfsbane, when you’re sure the school has enough of it because of all the werewolves. Tomorrow, you’ll definitely ask, but for now you cover your hand with your long-sleeved shirt and you reach for the plant quickly.

It burns you despite your attempt to cover your hand, but it always does, so you’re not surprised. A groan escapes unbidden between your clenched teeth, before the pain fades away and all that’s left are tiny, white scars. Pretty soon, the scars are gone, too. 

You decide that’s enough scavenging for the day, and you start to head back to your dorm. You’re really tired, desperate for a nice cooling shower to ease the ache in your bones.

You wish you had changed into your wolf, but it’s far too late now, and the discomfort makes itself known throughout your entire body. You haven’t shifted in a while, actually.

When you get inside the school you catch your eyes in a hallway mirror, and you’re unpleasantly shocked to see that they’re a bright yellow.

You immediately look down and pull your hair over your face, wondering why the tell-tale feeling of a gold tint to your eyes never made itself known.

Usually, your eyes will become sharper and small spots of yellow will leak into the edges of your vision, so you’ll know it’s happening and you’ll have time to hide them before someone sees. This time, you never get a warning and now you’re frantically trying to cover them.

You hurry to your room, throwing the door open and shutting it quickly.

It takes you a second to realize that someone’s already in your room.

“Josie?”

It’s somewhat breathless, disbelieving, but she’s there.

She’s wearing small, pink shorts and a white pajama shirt, sitting on your bed for God’s sake. You don’t think she’s ever been in your room before. Maybe once or twice, but never for very long. 

“Lizzie told me that she saw you going to the forest,” Josie says, instead of a greeting, standing up slowly from her spot on the bed.

You trace her movements in your golden gaze, still standing against the door, when you suddenly remember that your eyes aren’t your own right now and that they could scare her. 

You don’t think she’s seen them yet, so you look down and breathe deeply. You’re instantly assaulted by that same vanilla, cinnamon, and green tea combination. She smells...amazing. You want to drag your nose along her neck and inhale her completely. You want to—  
  


  
Fuck. Your heart quickly stops in your chest as you hold your breath. You almost cover your nose with your hand, but your fingers are shaking and that’s not a good idea. If you allow yourself to move, you might do something bad. You’re not in the right mind right now, too dangerous and she’s too tempting. You wonder what would happen if you just slipped, if you let yourself listen to the thoughts pounding in your head.

“I think you should go,” you try to say firmly, but it comes out exhausted and too wanting. There’s a _thrumming_ sensation just beneath your skin, a low voice that’s telling you to pull yourself together and claim—

  
  
“I think you should go,” you repeat, afraid of yourself now. She still doesn’t answer, only getting closer.

“No, Hope, you need to listen to me. You just can’t go off on your own like that, it’s irresponsible and...” You tune her out in a desperate attempt to ignore the lingering thoughts pounding against your skull. With every step she takes, she only gets closer to you, the need swirling in your head only getting stronger. You can’t tell if you want to bite her or kiss her.

You stay frozen, begging your body to stay still, ignoring the way your canines are elongating in your mouth, the way your golden eyes seem to brighten with every passing second.

“Wow, you can’t even bother to look me in the eye,” she bites out, barely a couple of inches away from you now. You’ve always seen her as the kind of shy, quiet girl—always relenting to her sister’s requests, always putting herself last. You wonder what happened between first period and now to make her act like this. “Listen to me!”

Something deep within you snaps, a new fire ignited in your bloodstream that turns you into the monster you’ve been trying to hide the entire night. The emotions you’ve been battling the whole day have finally fought it out, and the worst ones have won.

You have her back against the door before either of you can blink, or even fucking think, and she gasps slightly, but you drown out the sound with a growl. Your growing teeth break the surface of your lips, but you ignore the pain, your wolf trying to establish dominance in the worst way.

You have a hand on both sides of her against the door, effectively trapping her in, and a sick, crazy satisfaction floods your system. You’ve wanted this forever—her so close to you, unable to leave. You have her. 

Her breathing is irregular, perfectly matching yours and you lean in slightly, the intoxicating aroma of her scent causing your eyes to shut slowly.

As your body relaxes, your mind begins to catch up.

“Fuck,” you curse, because you don’t know what else to say. “I-I’m so sorry.” You immediately back away, stepping backwards until your knees hit your bed and you stop. Your hands are thrown up in surrender, apologetic and despairing.

She can’t forgive you for this.

“I-I have to go,” she says, her mouth forming each syllable but you can’t hear a thing.

She leaves in a matter of seconds, and you’re left sitting on your bed, asking yourself how something like this could have happened this quickly.

She won’t forgive you for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don’t know if i liked this chapter, hopefully my next ones will be better :)


	3. Chapter 3

When you wake up, it’s to a room full of destruction. The chair and dresser has been snapped in half, and there’s holes in the walls. The only thing not destroyed is the frame of your bed, which still smells like vanilla.

Your sheets are torn, though—your pillows remnants of what they once were.

You had forgotten, when you woke up. Forgotten about everything that had happened last night. How you had spent hours wrecking your room in a murderous rage that had only stopped when your body knocked you out in exhaustion.

There’s dried blood on your hands and knuckles, caked into cuts and scars that have already healed.

When you wash your hands in the bathroom, the mirror tells you your eyes aren’t gold anymore.

When you close them, memories flash against your eyelids; the way her warm body felt next to yours, the way your teeth had just barely scraped her neck when you leaned in, the way she had waited for you on your bed—

The way you had told her to leave. You feel like you’ll be in agony about it the rest of your life.

When you check your phone, you see that you’re actually really late. It’s nearly nine o’clock, and you’ve missed training with Alaric, breakfast, and ten minutes of first period. You get changed quickly, sending an apology text to Alaric before making your way to Dorian’s classroom.

Thirty pairs of eyes turn to look at you when you open the door, but you only avoid one.

Dorian raises his eyebrows at you but doesn’t say anything, so you make your way next to Josie. If anything is wrong with her at all, she doesn’t show it.

Her hair is in perfect waves around her head, and her uniform is immaculately put on. Whereas, you’re a mess in human form.

She doesn’t look at you when you sit down, focusing on the bottle in front of her. Inside it is a clear magical liquid that all potions use as a base.

You inch your chair away from her as casually as you can, wanting to give her room after your unforgivable mistake.

You don’t know how to fix it. Do you apologize? Do you beg for forgiveness? Or do you do _nothing_, instead?

You glance at the board quickly, seeing a preparatory list of instructions for the potion. The first one is already done, but it seems as though she had waited for you for the next ones.

“You weren’t at breakfast this morning,” she notes when you come back from the ingredient pantry with the empty White-lipped Banded snail shells that you’re supposed to crush into dust.

“No,” you say, and you wonder if this is the right time to apologize. She crushes a snail shell particularly hard and you think that maybe it is.

“I’m sorry,” you try. “About last night. That was really inappropriate, especially because—“

You cut yourself off before you can continue. What were you going to say? Because she has a budding romance with Penelope Park? You could never admit that.

“Because?” Josie frowns, looking into your eyes like she’s searching for something. You imagine that she’s trying to see if your eyes still have any gold in them.

“Because—“ You don’t know what to say. Everything you could say would just sound like an excuse.

“Because nothing,” you decide on. “I’m just sorry.”

She doesn’t say anything back, which causes your heart to plummet into your stomach and dissolve in acid. She adds the crushed shells into the flask, and the potion shimmers slightly.

You’re squashing cloudberries when Dorian calls you to his desk.

It takes him a second to look up from his papers even though he was the one that wanted to talk to you.

“So? What do you have to say for yourself?” he asks, when you don’t immediately start talking.

You can tell that all the witches in the classroom are trying to listen in by the way they’re all holding their breath. Except for Josie, of course, who is still smashing berries almost angrily and not caring at all. It bothers you, how you don’t have her attention, but you know you don’t deserve it.

“I wasn’t feeling well,” you tell Dorian quietly, because you weren’t, but that’s not the whole truth.

“Okay,” he accepts easily, recognizing the look in your eye. “Stay after class for a couple of minutes so I can catch you up on what you missed, though.”

You nod, heading back to your own desk. Josie has already added the berries in the drink without you, which shouldn’t hurt you, shouldn’t even fucking be a thought in your head, but it stings all the same.   
  


  
Looking at the flask, you see that the potion has turned a light pink, which it should be at this stage, so you’re glad everything has been done right.

Lizzie catches your eye when you make the mistake of looking around the classroom at other people’s potions. She glares at you in a manner that makes you think Josie told her everything, but then you remember that Lizzie _always_ glares at you like that.

You turn back to Josie, intent on opening your mouth and ending this awkward silence, but at last, nothing comes out. You can’t find anything to say, and she never looks at you.

An intense longing that you’ve never felt before makes itself known in your chest—much different from when you had lost your mom and then your dad. Your grip on the table tightens slightly, and if you dent it, neither Josie or you say anything.

The bell rings seconds later, and this time Josie is the first one out, even leaving her sister to pack up alone.

You talk to Dorian briefly about schoolwork, and then he tells you that Alaric wants to talk to you after your last class.

Your classes are as lonely as they always are, yet today you seem almost more isolated.

You ditch lunch, because you still aren’t hungry. You think about how long Josie must have waited in your room—how she had noticed that you missed breakfast—until your meeting with Alaric arrives.

“You can’t just ditch our training sessions, Hope, they’re essential to—“

“I didn’t do it on purpose. I swear, I wasn’t feeling well and just woke up late,” you interrupt him quickly, before he can go on a rant and keep you both there for longer than necessary.

“Fine,” he says, relenting much more easily than he usually does. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Please don’t be late.”

You’re almost out of the door when he stops you.

“And I need you to go to dinner tonight. I was told that you’ve missed all your meals today.”

The sentence gives you pause, but you dismiss it easily, wanting to leave quickly.

“Fine,” you yield, even though you still aren’t hungry. You can probably just grab some snacks from the kitchen and hang in your room for the rest of the night.

You take a shortcut to the kitchen, thinking about who might have told Alaric that you weren’t at breakfast or lunch today. Was it...? No. 

You hear two familiar voices as you round the corner into the kitchen. You instantly recognize them as you hear one voice start laughing.

A familiar pit of dread makes its home in your stomach, and you turn the corner very slowly. You’re immediately met with the sight of Josie and Penelope leaning against the kitchen counter, clearly flirting and bodies covered in flour.

They instantly stop laughing when they see you, but you can only focus on the way Josie’s smile evaporates the second her eyes land on you. The thudding of your heart resounds loudly in your ears, and the room quiets so incredibly that you feel as if they can hear it, too.

“Oh,” you say, trying to keep the pain out of your voice, but the task seems impossible, and your heavy thoughts latch onto your tongue. A knot double-ties itself in your throat and you desperately try to clear it. You attempt to put a smirk on your face but it comes out like a grimace, and the smile Penelope sends your way has you clenching your fists. Green, crazy jealousy creates a monster out of your veins.

“I’m so sorry,” Josie apologizes, trying to move out of the way immediately with a shy, embarrassed smile. It’s the first one she’s given you all day, but you can’t find it in yourself to return it. “We’ll just come back later.” She grabs Penelope’s hand and starts to tug her with her, but you stop them quickly.

“No, no,” you laugh, no humor in your voice whatsoever. You eye the way Penelope and Josie’s hands fit perfectly together. Something inside you snaps bitterly. “I wasn’t hungry anyways.”

You leave as fast as you can, and if you use a little bit of supernatural speed, you don’t think twice about it.

When you finally open your clenched hands to unlock your room’s door, you find half-moon indentations in your palms.

You lie in bed for hours before you sleep, thinking about the way Josie’s smile had disappeared, and when you dream, you see Josie and Penelope holding hands and laughing.

The only light in the pitch-black room comes from your glowing, golden eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

Sitting in Dorian’s class the next day is almost unbearable. Neither you or Josie bring up the kitchen incident. She doesn’t bring up the fact that you nearly assaulted her two days ago, either.

“I have some of the ingredients from the list,” you say, when you two have blown through all of Dorian’s instructions and can start working on your own with the real ingredients.

You pull out the bag as quickly as you can, dumping its contents out on the table. Light red paints your cheeks when you notice the weird look Josie is giving you. You think she might be kind of angry.

  
  
Josie opens her mouth to say something, which has you feeling relieved and fearful all at once. Something seems to catch her eye and she promptly closes it, and then opens it again.

“Wolfsbane? Why do you have that?” Josie points to the purple plant in question, and you frown.

  
  
“Uh, it was on the list, right?” you ask, confusion evident in your voice, and you start to pull out your list.

“No, Hope, it wasn’t,” she tells you, the way she says your name immediately finding its way under your skin, permanent and never-ending in a way that you know you’ll always be thinking about. Sure, she’s said it before, but each time reminds you that you’re real to her in a foolish way that has you cursing in your dreams.

“Yes, it was.” You hold up your list, pointing at the spot. “Number four. See?”

Josie frowns again, her lips forming a pout that has you momentarily distracted. The love potion lies forgotten between you and Josie.

“No, the fourth ingredient is milk,” she corrects, like you’re fucking demented, and then she slides her list over to yours.

1\. 5 Tablespoons of Natural Honey  
2\. 3 One-Inch Pieces of Bloodwood Tree Bark  
3\. Six Purple Sunflower Seeds  
4\. One Tablespoon of Reindeer Milk  
5\. 4 Inches of Shedded Rattlesnake Skin  
6\. 2 Eucalyptus Petals  
7\. One Lamb’s Ear  
8\. 3 Teaspoons of Rainwater  
9\. 2 Pale-Tipped Killdeer Feathers  
10\. One handful of Ash Grass

  
You look back at your list, and you see it’s exactly identical to hers. You could have sworn the fourth ingredient was wolfsbane.

“What the hell?” you mutter, but Josie’s already moving on, reaching past you to grab the handful of ash grass. Your shoulder burns where her arm bumps. It might have only been for just a second, but the sensation remains for the rest of class.

  
You think about how weird the whole wolfsbone thing is for about half a second, and then Josie does something to distract you again. She starts to snip the grass into the potion messily, almost uncaring—her eyes on you purposely with every cut from the scissors. She’s obviously much more angrier with you than you thought. You immediately pull her arm back with your hand, resisting the urge to keep it there when she stops.

  
  
“Are you crazy?” you whisper-shout, alarmed at her sudden actions. She could’ve killed the both of you. You point to the instructional book. “It says grind it, not cut it.” 

“Are _you_?” she whispers back heatedly, and you lean away with a small frown. She’s obviously being petty over nothing because she’s angry with you for some reason, you just wish she would tell you, because—in truth—there’s a lot of reasons to be mad at you. “What were you thinking?”

“Me? What was _I_ thinking? You just ruined our potion.” The anger that has been building up the entire week is flowing freely now, aimed directly at the wrong person. A familiar golden color reaches the corner of your eyes. You’re reminded of when you were children and could never seem to stop arguing, along with Lizzie. You’re not children anymore, but the cycle has never stopped. “We’ll have to start over!”

  
“Oh, calm down, do you really think I’m insane? The potion wasn’t even open,” she says, gesturing to the potion, which has its lid on it. You don’t know how your werewolf senses had failed to ignore that, or why she tricked you in the first place. “And I meant, what were you thinking going into the woods alone?”

  
“I wasn’t in danger, trust me,” is all that you can say, because how do you tell her that in the forest, you’re the thing that creatures are scared of? That _you’re_ the danger?

Everyone knows that you’re a tribrid—but no one knows the extent of what it means. Twice the power when you’re alive, triple it when you finally die.

  
“I can’t,” she says simply, folding her hands into her lap and sitting calmly.

“I-I’m sorry,” you tell her, the heat in the room decreasing a bit as you pull back. Any gold color in your vision is fleeting now, replaced with a sadness that you can’t escape, but must be evident in your blue eyes by the way she looks at you.

She will never trust you, and even if there was a chance she could, it’s gone now that you practically harassed her in your room. You wonder why she even cares that you went to the forest alone.

You probably couldn’t say it, but the forest is your safe place—the one area you can go to when your heart is at war with your mind, when your battles are bigger than you. It seems like your wolf knows that the most. The ground beneath your feet seems more steady when you’re a wolf, like your steps have more purpose and less weight.

  
Your father taught you that the change is nothing to be afraid of.

  
  
“Hmm,” Josie huffs. Her hair is straight today, half a braided crown on top of her head and half down. You want to tell her she looks pretty, but the room is too quiet and you’re afraid she’ll hear you.

You chose, a while back, to crave her silently, but these past few days have blurred the lines and you’ve found yourself repeatedly crossing it.

  
“Are you scared of me?” you ask minutes later, when you can’t get the question out of your head, and it finally comes out unbidden between your lips. The line is nonexistent now. Josie just looks at you, tilting her head to the side in that way she does when she’s thinking hard. You know the answer can’t be good.

The bell rings, and then Josie doesn’t answer at all.

  
  
You think about the interaction until during lunch, which isn’t so bad. They’re still serving leftover pancakes from breakfast. You grab about a dozen and head to your room, where you reside in until PE. PE is not the physical education it’s supposed to provide, but a way for vampires and werewolves to wrestle each other without getting in trouble.

Coach Vincent—a werewolf—decides to pick on you today for offensive combat. Jed volunteers to serve as your opponent, which doesn’t make sense because you didn’t have a choice to volunteer or not.

The boy smirks in a nasty way when he shakes your hand, and your claws extend without your consent seconds later. He eyes your hands with an emotion somewhere between excitement and fear. He then keeps talking to you, maybe trying to goad you or tempt you into hitting him first, but you let the insults roll off of you.

You haven’t been able to control yourself lately, and your lengthening claws are a testament to that.

  
He throws an obvious jab to your right, and you instantly deflect it without moving too much. Every punch he throws at you is easily defended against, and you think he’s getting angry by the way his smirk falls when his pack starts laughing.

  
“What a fucken’ coward,” Jed sneers after a couple of minutes, and you wonder how that makes sense to him. “The Great Evil’s daughter, my ass.” He sends a roundhouse kick that genuinely surprises you, but you duck pretty fast, and he jumps up high and lands behind you. You spin around quickly.

After a couple of more weak swings and kicks, you’re bored and ready to leave, but Jed doesn’t let you. You make eye contact with Coach behind Jed, but he avoids your eye and gives you a salute that has you rolling your eyes.

“Come on! Fight me!” he yells, but you still ignore him.

Jed continues to make rude comments about you and your dad, but his last one hits you a little harder than you expected it would.

“Everyone knows it was your fault he died, Mikaelson, but what no one can figure out is how a weak piece of shit like you was able to do it.”

  
Despair boils hot in your stomach, and when gold floods your vision you don’t try to hide it. A red-hot anger that you’ve felt many times before appears behind your eyes, blinding you in fury.

So when Jed aims an uppercut at your jaw, you can’t resist grabbing it and tugging his arm behind his back. Your other hand comes around on his shoulder, and you’re horrified when it pops out of place. Your other arm moves out of control, connected to your body but separated from your mind. Before you can blink twice, your hand snaps his radius cleanly, and he screams in pain. The sickening crack radiates throughout the room.

You drop him quickly, and he falls to the floor gripping his shoulder and arm.

  
  
“Oh my god,” you gasp, your hand coming up to cover your mouth in shock. You look around slowly and the whole pack is watching you in apprehension. Some even back up slightly.

  
“Jed, I’m so sorry,” you take a step back, but he holds up his hands as if to stop you, and you don’t try to move forward again. There’s blood dripping through the clothing on his shoulder, and there’s deep scratches on his arm. Your claws retract painfully—the golden color in your eyes disappearing quickly. Your previous anger is replaced by disappointment in yourself.

What have you done?

It’s a commonly known fact that werewolves don’t heal like vampires, and when you look at Jed, this fact is more apparent than ever.

Coach Vincent is already attending to Jed by the time you snap out of your thoughts, and when he looks at you there’s a scary glint in his eye you’ve never seen before.

“Go to the headmaster’s office. Now!” he barks, and you freeze slightly before obeying.

The walk to Alaric’s office is long. You can’t stop looking at your hands. There’s blood in your nails, and a bruise forming on your wrist from where your strength had hurt even you. It goes away a minute later.

You can’t believe yourself. It almost doesn’t seem real. You lost control, and you’ve been acting weird ever since that first Traditional Magic class a couple of days ago. You can’t focus, and the quality in your schoolwork has been dropping. When you round the corner coming up to Alaric’s office, you remember this morning—how you had tried to do a spell to dry your hair in the morning from your shower, and the spell had set it on fire instead.

“Come in,” Alaric tells you when you knock once on his door. He fixes you with a stern, disappointed look that has your feet melting to the floor.

“Before you say anything, I just want to—“ you attempt to defend yourself quickly, but he cuts you off.

  
  
“What the hell, Hope?” The lines etched onto his forehead are more prominent in the low lighting of his office, which is weird. The hollow of his cheekbones and the thin line of his lips tells you that Coach Vincent has already told him everything and he’s beyond angry. “Give me a good reason not to suspend you right now.”

But you don’t have one. What would you tell him, anyways? That you lost control? 

(Hope Mikaelson doesn’t lose control. She hasn’t in years.) 

That Jed’s trash talk got to you? No one gets to a Mikaelson. You’re supposed to be strong, like your mother and father taught you.

“I got angry,” you say, simply shrugging instead of everything you want to scream out. The room is silent as he watches you sadly. There is no noise, and you can barely hear your heartbeat. Your heart stutters once, twice, and then it stops altogether. You imagine that this emptiness is what it feels like to be a vampire.

“You got angry?” he asks, but it’s not a question, and he’s pissed off. You don’t know what to say. “God, Hope. Do you want to know what happened when your father got angry?”

  
Something dry and miserable forms in your throat that’s tough to swallow. You gulp down nothing and turn away.

“He’d kill entire families—innocent families—within seconds.” And then Alaric leans in. “Or when he wanted to have fun, he’d make the torture last for hours.” You know this, of course—your father was a horrible monster and you’re supposed to hate him.

You can’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for everyone that’s confused about what’s happening to hope, don’t worry it’ll clear up in a couple of chapters :)


	5. Chapter 5

"Do you even care?” Alaric asks you, when you haven’t said anything for a while. He’s standing up now, both hands planted to his desk angrily. You’re still staring blankly at the desk itself, unable to think of words to explain yourself, or at the very least, defend yourself. 

“Yes.” The single word comes out strangled, the tears hiding behind your eyes fighting their way to visibility. There’s an odd thickness in your throat that won’t go away, and your head is pounding with a fierceness that’s unfamiliar to you.   


Or maybe too familiar. 

You shut your eyes slowly, the reality of your situation disconnected from you. You feel like you’re watching this happen from the outside, your heart desperately pounding on the window begging to be let in. A voice in your head is screaming at you to care—to do something, anything at all. You want to shake yourself out of it. 

“I can’t control myself anymore,” you murmur truthfully, your voice sounding hollow and too emotional at the same time. The pounding in your head is stronger now, and when something wet hits your hands, you realize you’re crying. Alaric’s eyes snap up to yours and he suddenly seems sadder. Neither of you speak for a while. 

“How long has it been since you shifted?” He sighs, hands on his hips in a resigned way.

“Only a week,” you tell him, your voice sounding unfamiliar to your own ears. You can’t recognize yourself. 

It’s like this person has your hands and your body, but everything feels unsettling and weird, as if you’re trapped in your own mind while you’re watching yourself do things you wouldn’t normally do.

Alaric looks at you, like really looks at you, and you feel like something has changed.

“Okay.” He says simply, but you know he has more. “Well, until you can control yourself better, I think...” 

He trails off slightly, and you know you’re not gonna like what he says next. 

“I think you’ll have to start shifting in the werewolf transformation spaces during the full moon,” he finishes, and leans back, waiting for your reaction. You explode automatically.

“What? You can’t make me do that!” you yell. Your mouth is working much better now, you think. 

“I’m sorry, Hope, but I don’t have a choice. You severely injured Jed, and if you can do this much damage during the daytime and in human form, I can’t imagine what you could do to someone when you’re a wolf.” 

He’s right, of course, but you won’t accept it—won’t allow yourself to be imprisoned like this. You give Alaric one more look before storming out of the room, ignoring his shouts calling you back.

You fling open the door to leave and you’re met with two sets of eyes. You’re not surprised to see it’s Josie and Lizzie, but it hurts all the same. They were obviously listening in on your conversation with their father. You imagine the whole school's heard about what you did by now.

You absentmindedly note Josie’s outfit—her uniform shirt is slightly crumpled in the front and her hair is mussed like she’s ran her hands through it a dozen times. The pink color of her cheeks makes you wonder why she seems worried. 

She’s probably just nervous about Jed, you think. 

Josie and Lizzie immediately step back when they see you, Lizzie tucking her hair behind the ear she had glued to the door. 

“How much did you hear?” you ask, cutting right through the bullshit you would’ve gotten from them if you had asked if they were listening. Before you have a chance to further call Lizzie out, she pushes Josie towards you harshly.

“It was all Josie’s idea,” she says, eager to blame anyone but herself. You know from Josie’s confusion and slightly pissed-off look that Lizzie’s lying.

Josie stumbles a bit, a little disorientated from Lizzie pushing her so suddenly, and you reach out to steady her automatically. 

Her eyes snap up to your own and you’re immediately entranced, unable to look away despite the heart pounding beneath your ribs telling you to. A rough beat of uncertainty passes between you, and it stays for a second longer than it should. 

Her fingers wrap around your elbows softly after she catches her balance. She gasps silently, the slight breeze of magic in the hallway carrying the sound away before it can reach your ears, and you pretend that her touch doesn’t soothe and burn you all at once. You pretend that the thin fabric over your arms is enough to prevent the sensation that sears a brand into your arm. 

Your eyes slowly drop to your own hands, and you notice that your fingernails are almost purple. You wonder if she can feel the ice of your fingers through her long-sleeve like you can feel the fire of hers. 

“Get your hands off my sister!” Lizzie squeaks, after you’ve held onto Josie a little too long to be considered normal.

You side-step the both of them, and Josie looks like she wants to admonish Lizzie and apologize to you at the same time, but she doesn’t do either. She opens her mouth and turns to Lizzie, but Lizzie has other plans. 

“Look, she still has Jed’s blood on her hands.” Lizzie points, and your eyes follow her direction unbidden. You’re humiliated to see that you actually do still have dried blood on your hands.

Your eyes immediately glance at Josie’s arms where you had touched her, but her uniform sleeves are still pristine and white, and you sigh in relief internally. 

“Lizzie, you can’t say things like that,” Josie scolds shortly, and you cut in quickly.

“No, no, it’s okay,” you stop her, something a lot like hurt lacing your voice. You swallow down a painful lump in your throat. Lizzie and Josie have always refused to be your friend for the several years you’ve known them. You don’t know why you thought this year would be any different. Lizzie starts arguing with Josie, completely ignoring you, so you leave. 

When you get to your room, it’s still a mess from the break down you had had earlier. You don’t know why you haven’t cleaned it—maybe you wanted it to serve as a reminder of what you did to Josie—but right now it just looks like a mess. You cast a spell nonverbally with a single movement of your hand and everything cleans up nicely. The chance of you going to the rest of any of your classes is slim now, so you decide to go to the library.

You search relentlessly for a book to solve your problems—your inability to concentrate, your aggression, your wolf—but nothing comes up. 

When you’ve gone through all the werewolf books, you decide that looking through the potion ones couldn’t hurt. It’s only minutes later when you find a couple on desiderio potum, but only one of them lists anything of importance. 

You read the book pretty quickly before putting it back in its spot, but as you slide it in another small book falls out. Its binding is completely leather, and you can tell it’s old by how worn it looks. When you open it, you see that it’s a diary. Everything is written in Latin, but thanks to your Latin class, you can easily translate it. 

** Jean Marion **

** 13 August 1853 **

** My son and I have just come across Rome. All his born days we have been running away from the hunters. They do not appreciate our yellow eyes, and are rather kicked about our nature, although, we have never wished to expose ourselves or hurt anyone. We have found residence with two young witches, who go by the names of Elise and Sylvia Witling. Sylvia talks like a book, and Elise is rather charming, too. I believe my son quite likes her. The folk here are wonderful as well. The people unassuming, their minds unacquainted with extraordinary beings. Life here will be easier, I should think. **

You skip a couple of entries down.

** Jean Marion **

** 29 August 1853 **

** Elise is most taken by that glass merchant, Itel Magnus, I believe. My son shall be quite disappointed to hear this, but it should pass quickly. Sylvia seems to have taken a liking to his ornary brother, who is much older and less civilized. Not to pile on the agony, but he is not the most handsome of men. I have advised her against attempting to court him, but she is rather persistent. I fear that he will ruin her, but both Elise and Sylvia are too far already consumed, and they have spent hours in the basement brewing away with some potion. I am afraid for what they are doing, but I know not to ask. **

You keep reading even though the book doesn’t seem like it has anything to do with what you’re looking for. It'll give you something to do, at least. 

** Jean Marion **

** 5 February 1854**

** Oh my! Elise and Sylvia claim to have created a love potion! I am loathe to admit that I have severely underestimated their skill of witchcraft. However, they have told me that they wish to use this love potion on the Magnus brothers off the wheel. It is wholly unwise and terribly foolish to perform this act, but I cannot complain against my saviors. They have sheltered my son and I during hard times; how could I ever repay them with such doubts?  **

Your eyes widen slightly at the obvious mention of desiderio potum. You slide the book into your bag when you see that it’s dinner time. You almost can’t believe it, but when you look around, the entire library’s empty. 

You pack up all your stuff and make a bee line for the dining hall. It’s not crowded when you get there, and there’s only a couple of students sitting at various tables. Despite the scarcity of people, you find them all still staring at you as you walk in. You hurriedly grab some mashed potatoes and find a seat at an empty table. 

You pull out the diary again, but a weird feeling has you almost hesitating. You feel like you shouldn’t get caught with this book in your hands, which is odd since you usually wouldn’t care. You shake your head before opening it again.

** Jean Marion  **

** 6 February 1854**

** I have met an amazing woman, Miss Anna. After my son’s mother, I feared I might not find love again. Sakes alive, you would not believe the woman if you saw her. She is magnificent and extraordinary in such a way that I had assumed she was supernatural, but at last; she is human. However, the moon paints her in a light in which I know she cannot be fatal to me. She is warm where I have been far too cold. My wolf enjoys her presence, so I know I must condemn myself to her character or else die.  **

A smile stretches across your face before you can stop yourself, and you look around to make sure no one has seen it before returning to the next entry. 

** Jean Marion **

** 7 February 1854**

** Elise and Sylvia have accidentally dosed me with their love potion, they claim, but my feelings are still strong for Anna and I cannot see myself ever abandoning them. They only hope to steal me away from her, yes, this must be it. My son, too, has been affected—Elise and Sylvia say—but he feels unremarkable as well. I cannot fathom— **

“—Hey, Hope!”

You almost scream, that’s how frightened you are. You cough out your mouthful of potatoes, looking up to find a smiling Milton Greasley. 

“Holy shit, MG,” you murmur, trying to collect yourself after that embarrassment. 

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” MG tells you, seating himself across from you casually. You hum a reply, but MG keeps talking. 

“So, I saw Jed in the hospital wing, nice job, by the way. You got him good. You know, I never really liked him, and people aren’t saying it, but a lot of students here are really glad you put him in his place, or rather, put his shoulder out of place,” he babbles on, and then stops to laugh at his own joke. You roll your eyes when he looks away, and you wonder if it’d be too rude to tell him to leave. 

“Thanks,” you say excitedly—_sarcastically_—and he nods along happily. It’s not that you don’t like MG, it’s just that it’s late, and you really want some time to yourself. 

“Well, I should go to sleep,” you say, taking the first out that comes to mind.

“Okay, I’ll walk you to your room.” MG gets up with you, and you bite back a seething remark. You endure MG’s theories of superheroes and whatnot until you make it to your room, and then he bids you goodbye. You wonder why he bothered to talk to you today, when usually you act like strangers to each other. What surprises you the most, however, is the way he hugs you before he leaves. It’s not a lingering hug, but you can admit—at least to yourself—that it was actually kind of nice. 

You take a quick shower before putting a hoodie and shorts on, slipping under your bed's comforter with light igniting from your fingertips and Jean Marion's diary. 

** Jean Marion **

** 9 February 1854**

**Elise and Sylvia are back in the basement tinkering. I have always admired their perseverance despite failure. They want to try their luck with the Magnus brothers again, which is an unmerciful fate that I believe cannot be attempted more than once. The townspeople are getting restless for a reason I cannot depict. My son has fallen under this precedent as well. He has grown more aggressive these past days, and I worry for his health. Anna is another matter altogether. Although we have only spent a short time together, I wish to give her a proposal of marriage soon, most favorably under the approval of the waxing silver moon. It seems as though the moon has only been waning lately, which completely and utterly vexes me! The forest seems so desolate now, and I have been losing time very quickly, and perhaps my sanity as well! Yesterday, Sylvia sent me to fetch for her usual herbs out in the trees, and I came back with monkshood of all things, the bane of my existence! O! How my palms still kindle from the memory! The memory which I cannot actually remember! All I can manage to think about is the way Anna looks at me underneath the most heavenly body of the sky, and how my wolf begs me to claim her as mine!**

Jean's words sound familiar for a reason you can't explain—and if you spend the entire night thinking about it, you forget it in the morning. 


	6. Chapter 6

"Ow,” Alaric groans when you drop him to the floor of the dock for the twentieth time this morning. As he catches his breath, you take a second to look around at the lake surrounding the two of you. The water is darker today, and it’s drizzling slightly, but you barely feel the cold as you pick up your bo staff again. 

“Hope, I know you’re upset, but you don’t have to take it out on me,” he grumbles, getting up and back into his defensive stance. You’re surprised you even showed up for your session with him today, but you didn’t want to stand him up again. 

“I’m not,” you strain through clenched teeth as you deliver another jab to his left. “Isn’t that the point of this, though?” 

Fighting with Alaric isn’t as challenging as it was years ago, but it keeps you in shape so you haven’t abandoned the sessions altogether. They’re definitely less frequent, though. 

Cinnamon and vanilla wafts through your nose suddenly, accentuated with the smell of rain, and you’re momentarily distracted as you catch sight of Josie huddled in a hoodie by the trees. 

Alaric takes the moment of weakness to slam you to the ground harshly, and your back stings for just a second before the pain leaves you altogether. Alaric holds you down for a second before pulling you back, and you complain bitterly in embarrassment under your breath.

“Hey Josie,” Alaric greets, and Josie takes a step closer, her arms wrapped around herself as she shivers slightly. It’s not even that cold, you think, but you have the sudden urge to take away her discomfort. You wonder if she saw the humiliation you experienced seconds ago. 

“Hey,” Josie says, glancing at you for barely a second before turning back to her dad. Her hair is slightly damp from the rain, drops of water causing it to sparkle slightly. You can’t look away. “The werewolves decided to prank the vampires again. There’s garlic everywhere in the dorms.” She shudders slightly, and you wonder about the extent of the situation. “God, they have to know that’s not funny.” 

“Can’t you just, I don’t know, magick the mess away?” Alaric asks, frowning slightly as he turns his staff around in his hands. 

“I tried that,” Josie mumbles under her breath, so lowly only you can hear. You snicker slightly and she sends a glare your way that has your laughter running back down your throat. “Lizzie and I think the wolves were able to get help from the witches. All our cleaning spells aren’t working, and every time we perform one, it just creates more garlic. “

“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” Alaric says, wishing you goodbye before leaving with Josie. You follow Josie with your eyes as she heads back to the school, and you pretend that you were never watching in the first place when she glances back briefly. 

Breakfast is a nightmare an hour later. The strong, terrible smell of garlic stays in your nose the entire morning, mixed in with the stench of the vampires and werewolves. Your only relief the whole day is Josie and her intoxicating scent. It lingers in your senses even when she isn’t near you. 

You’re sitting in the dining hall eating pancakes when you see a moment to continue reading from Jean Marion’s journal. You open it before you can stop yourself or mind the people around you.

**Jean Marion **

**11 February 1854**

**I fear that Anna is frightened by me. My son’s dangerous mood seems to have poisoned me as well, and to make matters worse, Anna has seen my yellow eyes. Although I cannot fathom how they appeared in the first place, I understand the drastic effect of witnessing them. She will think me a demon, or even worse, unworthy of her love, and I will have nothing to contradict it. My wolf is becoming obsessed with himself, burying my human personality and coming out in the most inopportune times. I am afraid of what will happen when I finally shift on the full moon on the thirteenth. I have been suppressing my urges, but this I can achieve no longer. The need is becoming too strong, the craving more incessant. **

When the diary entry ends, you lean back in apprehension. You haven’t been able to control yourself—like Jean—but he had a dose of the potion and you’ve never drank any of it. You think it’s weird how similar you are to Jean in this way, but two voices pick up in your ear before you can think twice about it. You look up to see Josie and Penelope talking. 

“—It’s so frustrating! And I know a witch helped them out, but I can’t figure out who,” you hear Josie say a couple of feet away, freshly showered and her hair still wet. You wonder how she had the time to dress perfectly when you barely had time to shower between the end of your training session with Alaric and now. 

“They probably didn’t mean any harm,” Penelope comments, and you frown. Something about the words seem weird, her voice slightly nervous in a way that makes you pause. Penelope’s laugh after comes out forced and short. It suddenly clicks to you.

She was probably the one that helped the werewolves with their ranking antics. It makes sense, you think, with her wicked nature. Of course, you could be accusing her just because you don’t like her, but _that_ particular thought doesn't stick in your head for long. 

“'Mean any harm'? Seriously, Penelope? It took me hours to clean up the mess. I found MG crying over his comic books. They were ruined by sautéed garlic. Sautéed garlic! Who has the time for that?" Josie continues to rant in an adorable way that has you hanging onto her every word, but you can tell Penelope has gone far away as her face takes on a guilty hue. You can't tell if it's because she actually feels bad or if she just doesn't want Josie to be upset. 

You realize you've been staring at the both of them for way too long to be considered ordinary, so you get up in a hurry, stuffing Jean's book in your bag. The walk to Traditional Magic is as lonely as it always is, but with everyone staring at you, you almost feel more isolated than usual. A couple of the werewolves are giving you death glares—clearly a gift from Jed—but a glare of your own has them scattering. 

The classroom door is open when you get there, but the bell hasn't rang yet so you don't go inside. You're early—again—which is slowly becoming an inconvenience. Unable to resist and with time to spare, you pull out the diary. 

**Jean Marion **

**12 February 1854**

**This morning I woke up to monkshood surrounding me. As you can most definitely surmise, I was in indescribable pain and could barely get up out of bed, with no memory of how I had attained the wolfsbane. Thank the gods for Sylvia and Elise, who treated me with healing herbs; however, these of which held no effect. And to my dreadful horror, Anna came to visit me, just as my very character was devolving. My wolf is steadfastly taking over, and sometimes I cannot even recognize myself. I do not understand what is happening to me, but I am surely losing my head. I had the deep and sinful urge to do terrible, unspeakable things to Anna, which I only narrowly avoided due to my son, who managed to scare her away. He, too, is caught in something which neither of us can escape, and in which the consequences are too harsh to face. My identity holds fissures in which I can no longer fix the cracks, and I'm drastically losing time. My only solace is this notebook, where I can attempt to elaborate on the difficulties I must take action on. **

Jean's handwriting is much sloppier in this entry, you think, his thoughts filling you with instant dread. Something is too familiar about the words, and unease catches you off guard—the tiny hairs on your arm and the back of your neck prickling with a ferocity which you can't reason with or cast away. Your thoughts are firing rapidly against your skull, so quickly you can't hold onto one idea for more than a second. You continue reading. 

**Jean Marion**

**14 February 1854**

**The world is purple now! O' sadness, paint an ocean out of my veins! All hope is forgotten, this heaviness in my torso. I cannot break free of! I am forever trapped, God, help me. Anna is dead, and so is my son. Is it possible? To feel this much pain? I thought not! The burn of a thousand aconite plants could not compare! How foolish I acted. How translucent he was! No, it is not true. She is not dead, and he did not murder dozens of people and stain their blood with bitter, indifferent ice. Elise is also dead! Sylvia is still mourning but my hand cannot stop trembling and my mind cannot focus long enough to lament for my son and my love! I will never feel happiness again, this much is true, and I will never breathe freely again. The air is thicker now, and I cannot hold it in my lungs for longer than a moment. The moon is not my friend anymore. We are almost strangers. It would be so easy—**

Jean's handwriting is even worse than before, almost disorganized to the point where it's unreadable. His sentences have no structure as well—his thoughts clearly unorganized. His last sentence is also incomplete, and you find yourself wanting to yell at him and beg him to finish his words. 

_What would be so easy?_ you want to scream. You frantically flip the pages of the journal but there's no more entries, and all you will ever know of Jean Marion is confined within a few measly passages. The deaths of Jean's son, Anna, and Elise explained with only a sentence. You're disorientated with the information, the new details you've just learned imprinted in your brain in a way in which you can't understand them. You find yourself re-reading the entry again but you can't discover any new meaning. 

The bell rings, and you're the first one in the class. When you sit down, you feel oddly attached, oddly affected. When your classmates file in, the room becomes noisy in a manner that seems unsettling. _How can they act like nothing has happened?_ you think. But nothing has happened. The world is still turning, and only a corner of it has stopped for you. No one cares, and no one knows to. You are the only person grieving Jean Marion. 

When Josie sits down next to you, it comes with a splash of cool water that has you sitting up straight and forcing yourself to forget the stories you've become enraptured with in barely twenty-four hours. 

“I’m afraid we won’t be working on our potions today,” Dorian starts once everyone's settled down. You only just notice that the flasks aren't set up on the desks like they usually are. “During my fourth period yesterday, it came to my attention that some students were seeing this assignment as a joke. They were messing around about tossing their potions back and forth like a game of ball, joking about slipping it into everyone’s orange juice during breakfast.” 

You raise your eyebrows in surprise, wondering how anyone could be so dumb as to suggest that. 

“So it is important that I make myself clear before we can continue making desiderio potum. This is not a silly love potion—this is a dangerous drink that can cause miserable infatuation and even death. I am only teaching you this topic because I assumed you were all capable and mature enough. To work with desiderio potum is a privilege, but clearly some people don’t understand, so I’ll explain why.” 

You sit back in your chair disinterested and vaguely tired, preparing yourself for another list of side-effects and rules from Dorian. It doesn't come. 

“The origin of the desire drink lies in Rome, Italy in 1853. It was first created by two young witches that wished to attract the Magnus brothers, whom they believed were equally taken by the women. The brothers, however, were human, but this didn’t stop the women. They put their heads together and spent about six months crafting the potion under the pretense of house work.” 

The pulse underneath your skin quickens with the revelation of what Dorian's talking about, and the presence of the diary hidden in your book bag suddenly becomes very, very heavy. 

  
_What a fucking coincidence_, you think. 

“When it was finally done, the witches made their morning rounds in the marketplace, giving free, cool drinks to hot merchants and blacksmiths. The Magnus brothers were among them. However, they were not given the right drinks, and instead, two different men were. A father and son pair, both werewolves and hiding under protection of the witches, whom they had an alliance with," Dorian continues, and you absentmindedly note Josie leaning forward in attentiveness. Her curiosity in the story sets off a deep satisfaction in you that spreads to your fingertips. They drum against the desk restlessly, waiting for more of the story you've already read about. 

“The potion was not brewed correctly—but the werewolves did not seem to have any adverse symptoms at first. So, the witches went back to their potion making. Over mere weeks, the father and son grew maddening with obsession. They became more aggressive, and could not seem to stop snapping at people. The city grew wary of them, but did not comment.” 

The entire class is silent, listening in a way that they haven't since they were first assigned the potion a couple of days ago. 

“As their behavior changed, so did their appearance. Their golden eyes would appear out of nowhere, their canines growing uncontrollably. This made it harder to hide their supernatural nature, which was beginning to become more apparent to their friends. After the son could bare it no longer, he went on a killing spree during the full moon, massacring nearly thirty people, including one of the witches who aided him to begin with.” 

You feel everyone's eyes on you as Dorian finishes up his story, the reality of what you did to Jed yesterday settling in your bones with a substantial weight. You wonder if that's what everyone's thinking about, too. 

“This story serves the lesson that you should not attempt to use this potion on any of your peers, and that we are only creating it for educational purposes. Does everyone understand?” Dorian finally concludes, and a couple of heads in the classroom nod dramatically. “Any questions?” 

“What happened to the father? And the other witch?” Josie's hand shoots up from her side before you can blink, or ask any questions of your own. 

“The father eventually began to have hallucinations and died from a repeated delusion that told him to administer wolfsbane into his body,” Dorian tells her, but directs his statement to the whole class. A shiver erupts across your shoulder blades, and you realize Josie is staring at you with a pointed look you can't interpret. “And the witch, despite her initial failure, kept working to perfect the love potion, which she did ten years later." 

The class erupts in small murmurs, more than slightly alarmed after hearing the whole story. 

"Although this story is very crude, I want to remind you not to worry. These side-effects have only been documented in werewolves and vampires, so this class doesn't really have to worry..." Dorian trails off, and then looks at you. You know he's about to call you out again, which is mildly annoying. 

"Now, Hope, if you think you've been dosed with an incorrect version of the potion, or if you start to feel any of the side effects I've mentioned, please let me know," he says—very, very loudly and drawing all the attention in the class to you. Again. 

You nod, but something doesn't quite sit right with you. It's an itch right beneath your skin, a tiny voice in your head screaming at the back of your mind, the bumps raising across your body. It's the similarity of Jean's situation to yours, the resemblance of the side-effects to what you're feeling, the way you had collected a handful of wolfsbane in an instance of terrible memory. It's the way you couldn't control yourself next to Josie, the way your eyes had gleamed gold and your claws had grown in a matter of seconds, the way you had snapped Jed's bones with an aggression foreign to you. 

You open your mouth, the bars of your teeth pulling back enough to urge your tongue to say something. 

_It's not possible_, you think. You never had an ounce of the potion. You're fine. 

You close your lips silently—like you never opened them to begin with—and something like regret pools in your mouth. You swallow it down, and it burns your throat like venom. 


	7. Chapter 7

You practically run away when the bell rings, deciding to visit the library again—choosing to skip out on all your other classes of the day without thinking twice about it. You’re consumed by this anomaly, this puzzle you can’t figure out. The idea that it relates to you is an awful, devouring thought in your head. 

You head to the back of the library, casting a locator spell on Jean Marion the second you’re sure the bookshelves are adequately hiding you. 

The spell tells you to go back to the place you found Jean Marion’s diary, which is odd since you’re pretty certain that that had been the only book there when you were looking. 

You run your hands along the spines of the books, searching for titles that relate to Jean Marion, but you find none. A flash of something gold catches your eye when you’ve just about given up, but when you turn back to look more closely, you can’t see it again. 

You roll your eyes, and slap the bookshelf in frustration, having been searching for an hour now. Another hint of gold lines up with your vision, and your arm snaps out to grab it before it disappears. 

Your fingers are met with a thick novel, protected by an equally thick grey cover, buried behind an array of other ones. It’s an old edition, which is obvious by how torn and wrinkled the pages are. You read the cover, which is fleetingly gold when you look at it in the right angle. 

You skim the title and the tiny description underneath it.

**The Case of Jean, Jack, and Jane Doe:**

**A series of studies conducted to examine the illusive effects of Desiderio Potum. **

**Zephrine Fentere**

You turn around quickly when a floorboard creaks behind you, and your shoulder sharply runs into another body. The book drops to the floor, and you curse inwardly as you slowly close your eyes in humiliation. 

You should have been able to sense someone coming up behind you, you think.

You smell her before you see her, a combination of scents that has you inhaling deeply before you can stop yourself.

“Sorry,” you apologize, attempting to keep your head down but you know she’s already recognized you. Your hair is not very common at this school, unfortunately. You bend down quickly to pick up the fallen book, but Josie already has. Her fingers float lightly over yours as she hands it back to you, and you find your hand twitching with want as it encloses around the book. Josie reads the title before you can hide it.

“Zephrine Fentere?” she whispers, a strange tone to her voice that has you almost throwing the book into your bag. “What are you doing reading his stuff?” 

You’re both still crouched on the ground, and the air around you feels oddly still, like it stopped circulating the second your eyes had met Josie’s. You almost can't breathe. 

“You know him?” you ask, your voice slightly wavering in a way that makes you cringe. You hate the effect she has on you. You stand up slowly, immediately holding out a hand to help her up, too, without thinking about it. 

She grabs your hand and you’re relieved, glad it wasn’t as big a deal as you thought. Her warmth envelops the chilly grip of your own. She doesn’t shiver or comment on the fact that wolves are supposed to naturally run hot, and as she rises up you briefly glimpse a sliver of her clavicle underneath the collar of her shirt. 

You look away quickly, feeling flushed and embarrassed, but Josie is already responding to your question. 

“Not really. He’s just been taught in a lot of Gemini coven stories. He doesn’t have the...best reputation.” 

“Oh,” you say, because what do you say to that? The book burns in your grip, and you have the sudden urge to put it back. The magic of Josie's hand in yours had temporarily dizzied you, and you've only just recovered. You wonder if she siphoned any magic from you, and you know this is impossible, but there's no explanation for how light-headed you are right now. 

“It’s just that his works are known for being, kind of, controversial,” Josie says. You want to ask her all sorts of questions, but that would be weird, so you just nod and keep your mouth shut.

“Why weren’t you in your last class?” she finally says, like that had been the subject she wanted to mention this whole time. 

“You’re not even in my last class,” you mumble underneath your breath, wondering how the hell she knows that. “Besides, I have study hall.” It’s a lie, of course, but you need to escape the situation before you lose control. You remember the last time you lost control next to Josie, and your heart convulses with agony. 

“No, you don’t,” she says, leaning in with the delight of being right. You inch backwards in response, your shoulders hitting the bookshelf behind you with a light _thump_. “You can’t just ditch school.” 

“What are you? The hall monitor?” you say sarcastically. Your mouth fills with venom and you close your eyes and turn away, swallowing it down painfully. Your canines pop out, unbearably tender—provoked in your attempt to hide them. In the second you try to distance yourself away from the situation, your mind bounces to Jean and the way his wolf dominated him whenever he was with Anna. The resemblance to this is too uncanny to ignore. 

“No,” she shakes her head, and you think that she’s probably frustrated with you. _You’re frustrated at yourself, too_, you want to tell her. “You can’t just skip school whenever you feel like it.” 

It’s definitely not that, you think. It’s just that you haven’t been able to do anything right, and it’s best if you just stay clear of people right now. 

“Sorry,” you apologize bitterly, the word pronounced around your elongating teeth with difficultly. You try to move past her. She doesn’t let you, her hand coming to wrap around your wrist. The heat of her hand shoots directly to your abdomen, and you’re so close to her you can smell her vanilla shampoo. 

You wonder if your eyes are already yellow again. 

“Josie,” you whisper, dangerously but not threateningly. You would never hurt her on purpose, but you’re afraid of what you would do to her if your wolf decided to take over. You’re still looking down to the floor when the grip she has on your wrist falters. You take the momentary weakness to your advantage, bumping shoulders with her softly and then leaving the second you’ve made it past her.

Your senses are still attuned to hers when she whispers your name—but you’re so, so scared that you let it disappear into the quiet of the library like it was never uttered at all. 

It’s just about lunch time, but you go to your dorm room like it’s the evening. You take a shower, trying to scrub away the guilt beneath your skin but when you're finished, it’s stronger than it was before. It stays attached to you the rest of the night, a reminder of your terrible actions and the appalling way you treat Josie. 

You snuggle up beneath your covers much like you have the couple of nights before, feeling exhausted even though it’s only noon. Almost like an afterthought, you grab the book you had picked up earlier and open it slowly. 

The first page holds a dedication. 

**To my dear sister, who I failed when she could only believe in my success. **

_Well, that’s dark_, you think, but you flip to the next page anyways. The first chapter is a summary on desiderio potum and its ingredients, so you skip that, too. 

**Chapter Two**

**Preface**

**It is commonly taught in the supernatural world that desiderio potum, more widely known as the desire drink or love potion, can only have ill consequences when ingested. However, I have found this to be a myth. My research contradicts this very idea, and instead I propose that werewolves and vampires can be affected by desiderio potum simply by being near the potion. **

_What the fuck?_ you think, the words immediately entrapped within your skull. You’re truly starting to believe this guy is crazy, but if he isn’t, desiderio potum could be much more dangerous than people warn. 

**To first understand desiderio potum, we must observe the backstory. It first started in Rome, Italy, of course, in 1853, where a pair of sisters fell in love with two brothers. They worked together to create a potion that would replicate their feelings in the brothers, which failed miserably. By accident, they supposedly dosed a father and son pair, who both soon fell ill. In his journal, the father—Jean Marion—reported feelings of fatigue, uneasiness, and sudden infatuation. **

You skip down a couple of sentences, already very knowledgeable about the character of Jean Marion and not needing to hear the story a third time. You’ve read his diary, for God’s sake. 

**Inquiry #1: Jean **

**After hearing about the tale of Jean Marion and his son, I had many, many questions. How did the witches know they had accidentally given the potion to Jean and his son if there were no immediate, adverse effects? If there had truly been an accident with who got the drink, how would anyone had known? This leads me to believe that the witches, Sylvia and Elise, were untruthful in who had actually received the potion. Yes, I suggest that Jean Marion and his son had never even drank the mixture to begin with, and had simply inhaled the drink from their proximity with it. I believe the witches had indeed dosed the Magnus brothers, but when the potion failed to hold significant effects, they disguised their misfortune with lies. **

**Of course, this is all just speculation, but—**

There’s a couple of more conjectures and theories that you skip as well, your curiosity trying to get right to the point. 

**Inquiry #2: Jack**

**In May of 1873, a vampire came to me requesting help from his debilitating ailings. He cited sudden feelings of fatigue and discomfort, moments of memory loss and delusion. He even remembered purposely seeking out vervain, which is incredibly poisonous to a vampire’s nature. This instantly reminded me of my research with Jean Marion, and more than a little excited, I asked him if he had been recently exposed to desiderio potum. He told me that his family had recently been attacked by a witch coven, who dosed some of his other family members with the drink. I asked him if he himself had ingested any, and when he swore up and down that he hadn’t, I was far too susceptible to believe him. **

**For the ethics of confidentiality, the identity of this vampire will remain strictly anonymous, and for the purpose of this study I will name him Jack. **

**I then asked Jack if he would mind staying in the town until I could come up with an antidote, to which he agreed. The vampire died a month later from drinking several gallons of concentrated vervain. The situation was madness, his actions an insanity I could not ignore. I begged the supernatural community to listen, but they discredited me quickly—the love potion an economic profit they would not wish to be deprived of. **

**Inquiry #3: Jane**

**Just six months ago, I bumped into a lone werewolf traveling into the city. I noticed her bag, which smelled strongly of monkshood, or wolfsbone. When I asked her why the plant was in her possession, she could not recall the reason. I admitted her to my research immediately, but the werewolf could not recollect if she had ever bumped into desiderio potum. This detail was combative to my study, of course, so I developed a test to detect whether someone had been affected by the potion—**

You try to keep your eyes open to read more, but you’re too tired and you fall asleep instantaneously, your interest in the subject being outlasted by fatigue. 

You’ve never slept this easily before. 


	8. Chapter 8

You wake up screaming in pain, tears running down your face before you can even open your fucking eyes. The skin of your back is searing hot, and you feel like every single nerve in your body has been stripped raw. You jolt up out of your sheets, your hair tangled and stuck to your forehead in sweat. You're naked for a reason you can't make sense of. 

You whimper, the awful smell of burnt flesh and wolfsbane almost making you throw up. You look down to see leaves and petals of wolfsbane all over your bed, mixed in with clumps of fur matted with blood and dirt. Your skin is on fire, the nerves of your feet too sensitive against the hardwood of the floor. 

You cough pathetically, tasting metallic blood against your teeth. When you focus on the fur on the bed, you realize it’s yours—the shades of whites and greys too familiar. 

The skin of your arms and legs have small boils and burns, red-blackish spots embedded into your normally pale skin. When you look into the mirror across from you, there’s a deep cut on your forehead that hasn’t healed yet. You also have small burns on your chin and neck. 

“What the fuck,” you curse, your face still wet from the tears that had been streaming freely until now. 

It’s obvious that you had shifted into your wolf last night, but you can’t remember a single thing. You also wonder why the hell there’s wolfsbane all over your bed. 

Something clicks in your head, and you lunge for the book between your pillow and comforter. Your finger stings slightly, and you pull the book free, a wolfsbane leaf falling out. You grumble slightly and then open the book, the reading you had done the night before springing to your mind. 

**Inquiry #3 (Continued):**

**For the next month, Jane stayed with me in my quaint home. There were nights when she would wake up screaming, days where she couldn’t remember nights at all. I would ask her to visit the marketplace for me, and she would come back with items I had not asked for, or once, she came back with nothing. When I asked her what she had done instead, she claimed she could not recall. She was losing her mind, I think, and all I could do was observe until something made sense. I worried for Jane, incessantly, but I could not find a correlation between desiderio potum and her symptoms. **

**As Jane’s condition worsened, I was able to devise a desiderio potum indicator. The ingredients and instructions of this test lie on page fifty-four. Furthermore—**

You flip to page fifty-four, not even caring to finish the passage—later, you’ll think that you should have had—and you find an entire chapter dedicated to what you're looking for. 

Underneath the chapter title is the spell used to see if you’ve been exposed to the drink. 

**| ostendere voluit ostendas insania |**

**As stated before, I was able to develop a test to measure how much potion one has ingested or inhaled. It does not require much time, but the spell involves several components of desiderio potum. However, this test can only be performed by those that take magic, not those that produce it. **

You groan, rolling your eyes to yourself. You need a siphoner, and there’s only two of those at this school. One of which hates your guts, and the other you treat like crap. 

You decide to ignore that for now, and you spend an hour or two trying to clean all your burns, the sun rising very quickly and when you check the time, you realize you’re already supposed to be in your first class. 

It takes another ten minutes to dress considering how much everything still hurts, and you don’t have time to clean your face at all. 

You stumble into class, not even wearing the uniform. You’re dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt, which were the easiest to get on in your condition. Your book bag is hanging off your shoulder, the strap digging into your shoulder uncomfortably. Everyone looks at you when you walk in. 

You keep your head down, relieved to see that Dorian’s not in the classroom. 

Josie doesn’t glance up when you come in, concentrated on cutting some leaves into delicate half-inches. Hurt stabs you like a dull knife. You decide to turn your attention someplace else. 

The potion is a light purple, a beautiful color that you can appreciate for just a moment. It's almost translucent, just a barely there glow that's violet enough that you can name it. It’s raining outside, too, and you stare for a little longer before Josie shoves some leaves and a knife your way. 

She doesn’t say a thing, only standing up and heading to the ingredient pantry. You sigh to yourself; she’s always angry around you and it’s always your fault.

If only you could talk to her like a normal person, you think. You wonder what could have happened if things were different. If she didn't have a good-doer dad and you didn't have a evil-doer dad. Would you be friends? Would you be even closer? Distance is good, especially right now, but you need her help—which sucks, frankly. You know she'll help you, but you know she won't want to. 

But you can’t pretend that nothing’s wrong anymore. The parallels between you and Jane are too clear, and you don’t want to end up dead in the woods or attacking other people because they looked at you wrong. You don't want to end up like Jean's son. You don't want to be the monster your dad used to be. 

You stand up. This is a good time to talk to Josie about what’s going on. She’s in the pantry, and if you follow her you can talk privately. Maybe not. You sit back down, because that’s stupid and she doesn’t want to talk to you. 

But you need her help. You stand up again, probably looking crazy to whoever’s watching you. Lizzie glares at you when you look back briefly. You contemplate asking her to help you perform the spell, but that’s way crazier than asking Josie. But it'd be less painful, you think. 

You make your way into the small closet, only a couple of minutes behind Josie. Her back is to you when you walk in. 

“I need your help,” you state immediately, without thinking. 

Josie’s head bumps into the top cabinet in surprise, and she swears shortly. That probably wasn’t the best way to ask her, you think. 

“Did you follow me in here?” she asks, turning around to face you. Her hair is straight today, silky smooth in a way that begs your fingers to reach out and touch it. You shake your head to yourself, her words finally registering. 

“No, I came in here for a peaceful morning stroll,” you respond sarcastically. Josie just narrows her eyes at you, a handful of purple peppermint leaves in her hand. 

“Okay, sorry,” you apologize, having no idea why you said that. Josie drops the leaves back in the jar and slaps her hands against each other in an attempt to clean them. “But I do. Need your help, that is." 

"You've been ignoring me the entire week," she comments, surveying the jars of ingredients slowly. You wonder what she's looking for. "Where's the lemon balm?"

She says it underneath her breath, clearly to herself, but your ears pick it up with no problem.

"Behind you," you tell her, moving forward and reaching your hand out to grab the jar. Unfortunately, she turns at the exact same moment, the side of her body catching your hand. You linger for just a second before you pull away quickly. She flushes, grabbing the correct jar, and you wonder if she's thinking about that night in your room, too. 

"Sorry," you apologize, once again, with more meaning. She's oddly still, and you imagine that you've scared her. How silly of you, you almost laugh, to think that things would ever be different. 

"What happened?"

Your eyed dart up instantly in confusion, and you quickly notice that her eyes are trained on the cut on your forehead that hasn't healed.

She steps forward, and you've suddenly forgotten how to breathe as she places a hand underneath your chin and another one next to your forehead, trying to get a better look. You eyes fall shut at the first touch of her soft, delicate fingers. Your jaw trembles as she lingers, and Josie must feel it because she pulls her hand away, very slowly in a way that causes your heart to implode on itself. She's so beautiful, and you can't look away. 

You're glad that the burns on your arms are gone, but frustrated that the cut on your forehead is still more apparent than ever now, with Josie’s eyes glaring into it. As she steps away, your stomach twists uncomfortably, almost like it's trying to digest itself as she pulls away. 

"I don't know," you tell her, because you haven't talked in a good minute or so. 

You don't know. 


	9. Chapter 9

Josie agrees to meet you in your room after dinner. You don’t know why she would ever want to help you, but you’re glad she’s willing to. 

The door’s unlocked when she knocks, so you tell her to just come in. You’re wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, your hair wet from the shower you just took. She looks at the door for a split second longer than necessary as she comes in, and you feel ashamed.   
  


  
(Can she recall the time when you had pushed her up against it, in a moment of weakness, of insanity?) 

She has a sweater and shorts on, and you have to remind yourself to stay in control when your fingers twitch at your sides with want. 

“So, what are we doing?” Josie asks, hesitating for just a second before deciding to remain standing in the middle of your room. Last time she had sat on the bed, you remember. 

“I just need you to perform a spell for me. I have the rest of the stuff done already.” And you do. You had spent the rest of the afternoon organizing all the ingredients correctly, and now you just need Josie to say the spell. “Please.” 

Of course, it’s not that simple, and you’re kind of nervous to tell her why you really need her. She needs to siphon magic from you as she performs the spell, and she needs to have her hand on your neck while she’s doing it. 

You don’t quite understand why, but Fentere had said it was the easiest way to get a good magical pulse, and you’re trying to get this done as quickly as possible. 

According to the book, if you’ve been affected by the potion, a black triangle will appear on the spot where Josie’s palm touches your neck. If you haven’t been affected, nothing should show up at all. 

“I need more information than that,” Josie tells you, her brown eyes sparkling in a way that jolts your insides. 

For a split second, you almost tell her. Another second passes and you realize you can’t. 

“Here’s the spell,” you tell her instead, slipping her a piece of paper out of the book you’re holding. 

“_Ostendre voluit ostendas insania_,” she reads out loud. You almost cringe. “What does this even do?” 

“Well...it’s a spell?” you say, slightly flustered and definitely not making any sense. You don’t know what information you can tell her and what you can’t. She rolls her eyes, stepping forward and grabbing the book out of your hand before you can realize it. She opens it right at the bookmark you had stupidly left in, and reads the chapter title quickly. 

“Desiderio potum indicator?” Her voice is lifted up in slight shock. 

You swallow thickly.

“You think you’ve been dosed?” she asks, her eyebrows furrowed in an adorable way that has you momentarily distracted. 

“No,” you say, because you know you haven’t been dosed. “I think I—“

You shut up quickly. “I don’t know.” 

Josie starts to flip through the book, and you realize she’s reading the first chapter. Your heart drops.

“It is commonly taught in the supernatural world that desiderio potum...can only have ill consequences when ingested. However, I have found this to be a myth....Instead I propose that werewolves and vampires can be affected by desiderio potum simply by being near the potion,” she reads out-loud, once again. You can almost recite the words as she says them; you’ve read them several times over, they’re so familiar to you.

“This is crazy,” she says, not quite meeting your eyes. “If this is true, two-thirds of this school could be in danger.” 

“I know,” you reply, because you really don’t know what to say. She continues to read for a couple of minutes before turning back to you. 

“Have you been experiencing any of these symptoms?” 

God, she’s still flipping through the pages.

“Fatigue?” You nod. 

“Memory loss?” Another nod. She continues to name a few more and you find yourself nodding each time without your permission.

“Infatuation?” There’s a pause. She looks up at you, something sad in her eyes you can’t figure out.

“Yes.” Your voice sounds strangled, a love confession forming in the space between your teeth. Josie looks away, and when your heart beats, you don’t feel it.

“This is serious, Hope. You need to tell Dorian.” 

“I’m fine.” You breathe, but it feels too heavy. “Everything will be fine.” 

Josie goes still for a moment, before she steps closer to you. She looks down at the book shyly. 

“It says I need to—“ She hesitates. She reaches out, her fingers skimming along your collarbone before pausing.

You swallow hard, willing your aching heart to rest for just a moment. “It’s okay.” 

You can feel her magic the second she really touches you. She gently raises the palm of her hand to the bare flesh of your throat, and you find yourself feeling awkward.

  
Maybe it’s because her skin is soft and warm, and against the sensitivity of your own skin, it’s enough to set your nerves on fire instantly. You wonder if she can feel the way your heart is beating way too quickly to be normal, if she can feel your pulse hammering beneath her fingers. 

“_Ostendre voluit ostendas insania_,” she whispers once, and then again and again. The ingredients you had set aside around the room start floating. You move your head to look around and Josie’s grip around your neck tightens to keep you steady. 

Her hand is warm, so warm in a way that ignites your soul and sets a permanent flame in your bloodstream. She’s so close, you could lean in and your noses might touch. 

But, there’s something else, something else _there_ lingering below the surface. For some reason you can’t explain, you feel faint and almost...displeased. Your temper is rising by the second, and you can’t focus on the syllables Josie’s mouth is forming. Your wolf is struggling deep beneath your rib cage, in the pounding of your heart and shaking of your lungs, asking for something you don't understand. Until, you do. 

It becomes clear pretty soon that your wolf can’t handle the dominant gesture of Josie’s hand wrapped around your neck.

Your head is pounding with vicious thoughts of reversing your positions and claiming her like you have the right to. 

She is not entitled to you, she is not property, you try to fight back, the internal war flashing in your eyes.

Josie is none the wiser, still murmuring the spell repeatedly. You can still feel the buzzing sensations of her siphoning magic from you, but your wolf is getting too powerful to ignore. 

Josie releases you finally, taking a step back in a way that you suddenly loathe. You want to her to be as close to you as possible.

“Okay, now we just wait for the symbol to appear...” Josie trails off, collecting herself. She leans back against the wall, and you’re overcome with the urge to prove that she is yours and only yours.

You’re practically shaking now, trying to resist, wondering what the fuck is wrong with you. 

“Hope? Are you o—“ The sound of her voice triggers your body to move on it’s own, spurring something deep within you, and you slam her against the wall quickly, a hand behind her head so you don’t hurt her. You barely have a moment to think about how you’re still trembling. 

You’re shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip but it’s not enough. You need more. You hook your hand underneath her thigh and hike it up on your waist, so she’s half wrapped around you. You bare your teeth dangerously, like a _fucking_ animal, and you’re begging yourself to calm down and back off. Your wolf won’t listen. 

“What are you doing?” she whispers, and you realize it’s deadly quiet besides the sound of your heavy breathing. You don’t know what you’re doing, you just know that she is _yours_ and Penelope Park does not _fucking_ deserve her. 

You finally make eye contact with her and she gasps lowly, the sound music to your ears and you lean in just barely. Your eyes are still open and hers are, too. You know your eyes are gleaming gold, and this must come to a shock to her, but it isn’t for you. You can see the yellow in the tips of your vision, illuminating her completely. _She’s perfect and she’s yours_, your wolf tells you. 

“You drive me fucking crazy,” you say, but it’s not you. It’s your voice and your lips but you would never say this to anyone. You’re incredibly angry for no reason at all. Irrationally jealous in a way you can’t control. “Are you fucking Penelope?” 

She doesn’t reply, only shakes her head, and it makes you infuriated.

_She’s yours_, your wolf repeats like a mantra. You can only smell the scent of cinnamon and vanilla. You never want to leave.

“You’re mine.” It falls out of your lips before you can stop yourself, and you angrily press your lips to hers. It’s not gentle, but you don’t want it to be gentle. You want her to know how much she means to you, how fucking _insane_ she makes you. 

When she gasps in surprise you take advantage immediately, scraping your canines against her lips before clashing your tongue with hers. You want her so bad.

_She’s yours_. 

Josie's back arches off the wall and into your touch, and you immediately push her back. You take her other leg and wrap it around your waist as well. Her mouth is hot and perfect, and you want more. She sighs against your lips, her ankles locking at your lower back and you can tell because her heels dig pleasantly into your skin there. 

She leans backwards to breathe, but you don’t fucking need to. You immediately attack her neck, trailing kisses from her jaw before sucking the soft skin you find just below. You bite down before you can stop yourself, because she’s yours, yours, yours. Her head falls back against the wall, panting softly in a way that has your hips grinding forward. You lift your knee to catch it between her legs. You never stop the relentless pace of your lips against her neck. 

Her nails are scratching delightfully against your upper back, and you move onto another spot on her neck. 

You lean back, your gold eyes dulling from their craze as you examine what you’ve done. There’s a couple of huge marks on her neck, which are already bruising. 

You can’t believe it. It probably hasn’t even been a minute, and you’ve bitten her like some demented animal. 

“I’m sorry,” you apologize, and she drops down from the position she’s in to the floor softly. “I’m so sorry.” 

Her lips are deliciously bruised, and you take several steps back, scared of yourself. 

You don’t know how you could have allowed this to happen again. 

“I’m so sorry,” you repeat over and over, because it’s not enough. 

“It’s okay,” she says, but her back remains to the wall. You see memories of Josie in the same position on the wall. Your canines retract painfully in your mouth. 

“We’re okay,” Josie breathes. But you're not. When she flees this time, you don't even try to stop her. 

You look at herself in the mirror on the wall across from you. You catch a mark just above the pulse in your neck. It’s a triangle.

_Crap._


	10. Chapter 10

You spend the entire night rolling around restlessly on your bed. There’s a warm sensation in your throat, just where the mark of the triangle lies, and all you can feel are Josie’s fingers. 

You shut your pillow over your ears, and all you can hear are Josie’s little pants and moans. You can’t even remember if Josie kissed you back. It seemed like it, but you can’t trust yourself now.

You need to apologize desperately. Deep down, however, you know your apologies mean nothing. You basically molested Josie, and there’s nothing you can do to get her forgiveness for that. 

You’re slightly relieved that it’s Friday, and when you gets up in the morning you’ll have the entire weekend to stay clear of Josie. 

Your eyes are bloodshot when you finally have the energy to roll out of bed. You had spent much of the night thinking of Josie and that damn triangle. 

You can’t look Alaric in the eye during your training session, and you remain in your room the whole weekend, trying to read Zephrine’s book in the seconds you’re not thinking about Josie. You flip page to page, but he has yet to cite anything concrete about a cure and you’re left with endless speculations. 

You steal food from the kitchen both Saturday and Sunday night, and—breathing in relief—you’re not seen by anyone. You usually spend weekends by yourself, but this time it feels weirder. You feel more alone for some reason, which bothers you immensely. You find yourself thinking about Josie too much. You have the sick thought to wonder if she enjoyed the kiss again. You know she probably didn’t, yet you can’t stop thinking about it. 

Your fingers burn in the knowledge that you got the chance to touch her, that you got to claim her, if only for a second. A howl resounds at the back of your throat, and you clamp your teeth down before your wolf can invade itself further into your thoughts. A mere second goes by before you’re thinking about it again. You wonder if you left a lot of marks on her skin, the memory of your lips against her neck too perfect of a picture to forget. 

Monday morning is hard to wake up to. There are bags underneath your eyes the size of book bags, and when you try to get ready for school your body weighs like lead. Your vision flashes yellow, and—with a sinking feeling—you remember that the full moon is in a couple of days. You can feel the need to shift more clearly now, a thrumming sensation set deep within your bones. 

When you look out of your window, you almost swear that you can see the glint of the moon in the darkness of the rainy sky. It’s impossible, you know, but you can feel it calling to you now, urging you to change and run and be free. 

You blink twice, dazed with the feeling like you’ve just been hypnotized, and you leave the room quickly for the dining hall. You almost forget to mask the triangle on your neck before you step out of the door, but you glamour your skin just in time. A part of you wants to keep it there for Josie to see, a reminder of how she had cared for you enough to help you. 

You’re disappointed in yourself for wanting her attention so terribly, but it’s all you’ve ever wanted for the past year or so, and as much as you would like to tell yourself that the potion is the reason you’ve been obsessed with Josie, it sets heavy in your head every time you try to think it. 

You grab a granola bar off of the breakfast buffet table, finding a seat by yourself at a random table. It’s not exactly early in the morning, but students are just starting to trinkle into the dining hall to eat. You find yourself nauseated with nervousness. You still haven’t figured how you’re going to talk to Josie.

Would it be better to ignore her? Or beg for her forgiveness, instead? 

You know you can’t ignore her. You are not a coward, but a part of you is searching in vain for an easy way out. It doesn’t come, and when the scent of vanilla and cinnamon wads into your nostrils, you freeze. 

One of your hands wraps around the table, the other desperately trying not to crumple the granola bar in its grasp. 

When you look up slowly, your eyes immediately catch Josie, who is walking in from the entrance with her friends. She looks immaculate, not a hair out of place, and your irritation spikes once again. 

You look like shit, your breathing shallow and your skin paler than it usually is. You haven’t been able to get a wink of sleep, and she looks wholly unaffected. Does she not care? Did it not even matter? 

Or is she putting on an act? Is she pretending because she’s embarrassed for you? Or does she feel disgusted with herself? 

No one could be able to tell by looking at her. She’s wearing just the single white button down, the sleeves unbuttoned to her elbows in a stylish way. She’s not wearing the usual tie, her collar dipping lower than it usually is. Her skirt seems a bit higher on her waist than normal also, and when you allow your eyes to wander you see a plentiful amount of the skin of her thighs.

She seems...happy. You flush, looking away in embarrassment. You really need to keep your eyes to yourself. But you can’t help it, and you find yourself glancing back up again. Your eyes fall upon the skin of her neck, and not a single blemish or bruise is painted against it. 

You know you left at least one hickey for sure, but when you search for one you can’t find it. Did it fade so quickly, or did she...cover it? 

You realize it doesn’t matter. She has every right to do anything she wants after you fucked up so badly. 

She knows now. She has to know that you’re infatuated with her like some terrible creep. How could you have been so obvious? 

You jaw clenches, something like deep, deep resentment itching between your muscles. Your teeth grit painfully against each other when you notice that Penelope Park has just made an appearance in the dining hall. She grabs Josie’s hand without a second thought, and your eyebrows furrow in confusion. 

Josie told you that she wasn’t doing anything with Penelope, but perhaps you can’t remember right. You haven’t been able to focus much lately, and now you can’t even focus on the fact that you’re clearly affected by that damn potion.

All you can think about it is Josie, Josie, Josie. 

The jealously flowing freely in your veins gives you a sudden surge of confidence, and if your eyes flash yellow when you stand up from your table you don’t think twice about it. You walk over to Josie as calmly as you can, your courage diminishing with every step. When you finally get to her, she barely looks up at you. 

Her friends all stop talking, and you glance around to each of them, their eyes narrowing at your very presence. You pause, suddenly feeling like this wasn’t a good idea at all. 

“Hey, Josie. Can we talk for a second?” you say lowly, and she hesitates before separating from her group. You watch her disconnect her hand from Penelope’s, and a crazed satisfaction punches you in the stomach. When she looks at you expectantly, you feel embarrassed, like you should have waited for another time to do this. She never makes eye contact with you, looking at the space on your forehead or looking down. 

Misery crawls into your lungs, and when you breathe it doesn’t come out right. You open your mouth to talk, and the words are hard to get out almost immediately. 

“I...just wanted to apologize—for the other night—“ You don’t even get to finish. 

“It wasn’t real,” Josie interrupts you, shrugging. You can’t interpret the look in her eye, but that’s maybe because she won’t even look at you. Her eyes are trained on the floor as she talks. Her words are velvet soft, but when they reach your ears they’re like wolfsbane bullets. “It was the potion. Not you. I understand that now.” 

It felt real, you want to tell her. It’s all you’ve ever wanted, you want to scream, but no words come out at all. You swallow thickly, and a headache swells behind your forehead. You feel like crying, and when a single tear spills out of your left eye, you let it. It’s not like Josie’s even looking at you anyway. You wipe at your cheek, searching for the strength to say anything at all. 

“C’mon, babe,” someone speaks up behind Josie before you can. “They’re serving hot chocolate.” 

You watch paralyzed as Penelope hooks an arm through Josie’s and leads her away, and Josie doesn’t spare you a single glance. When their fingers intertwine sweetly, it finally clicks. 

They’re officially together. 

The granola bar you just had for breakfast comes up like acid in your throat, and your steps are heavy as you lean back dizzy. 

You almost run back to your room, your book bag forgotten at your lunch table. You can’t find it in yourself to care, because you can’t even make it to your room. You duck into an empty restroom across the hall from your room, vomit spilling out of your mouth before you can stop it. You heave and heave, and when you look down there’s blood-painted wolfsbane petals in the toilet. You wipe at your mouth, flushing the toilet before leaning forward with your palms on your knees. Another wave of nausea hits you, and a voice is saying something in the back of your head.

You almost don’t recognize it, but it becomes clear a second later when a growl escapes your mouth. It’s your wolf, more apparent than it’s ever been, and it’s begging you to give up control to it. 

**Let go. I’ll fix everything**, she says, and you clench your teeth in pain. 

But you can’t let your wolf take over. This is just the potion, you know. If you let go, everyone at this school will be in danger, and you don’t trust your wolf to not attack Josie again. 

The wolf repeats its mantra in your head, and you shake your head miserably, stumbling out of the stall to wash your hands quickly and make it into your room. The feeling of betrayal coursing in your bloodstream leaves a more bitter taste in your mouth than the wolfsbane.  


_ It wasn’t real. _

How could Josie do this?

_It wasn’t real._

How could she forget? How could she just jump into a relationship with Penelope right after what happened? 

  
_ It wasn’t real. _

You cast a sound-proof spell across your walls, before letting out a scream that shakes the room around you. You feel incredibly jealous, and you can’t control your anger once again. A sob wraps itself between your teeth, and you punch the wall next to you. The surface of the wall crunches underneath your fist, but the pain never registers, and you allow yourself to do it again and again. 

“She lied,” you whimper sadly, angrily, swiping the contents on top of your desk to the floor. The sound isn’t heavy enough to satisfy you, and you knock over your drawer next. It makes a larger sound, and you almost feel better. You spend the entire day ruining your room, and when it hits midnight, you feel a sick crunching in your bones.

It’s your wolf trying to take advantage of you in this horrible state, trying to shift so she can take over. You allow your bones to break, but not to reform, and you stay shaking in pain until the morning. 

You missed all of your classes yesterday, but you can’t find it in yourself to care, and you know you’ll miss all of them today, too. 

Blood is splattered all over your knuckles and there are red lines on your arms and face from trying to distract yourself from the pain of the shift. 

You lay on your bed for an hour, utterly exhausted, and you’ve found that you’ve forgiven Josie. 

You love her, you know, and you’re suddenly filled with the sick need to tell her, to convince her that you’re a better mate than Penelope could ever wish to be. 

A second later you’re angry at her again. Your mind is split between a thousand different emotions, and there’s a single feeling of indifference hanging right between all of them. 

It’s the knowledge that you’ve gone crazy, absolutely mad and insane. And you don’t even care. You think of Jean and Jack and Jane for all of a second, before focusing on Josie again. 

You pass out halfway through your delusions, finally falling asleep for hours. When you wake up several hours into the evening, you feel terribly disorientated, but much better. However, you’re in too much pain to even register all of it. Distantly, the moon waxes outside your window. Watching it, you can almost forget about Josie and everything that happened, before her father taps on your door in a string of rapid knocks. 

“Hope. Open the door,” Alaric tells you. You don’t even respond, panic filling your veins as you look around your room. It’s completely destroyed, much as it was that other night Josie had come over. Except now, there’s blood all over your clothes and walls.

_It wasn’t real._

A minute of silence passes before he knocks on the door again. 

“Come on, Hope. Open the door please.”

_ It wasn’t real. _

You don’t know what to do. You could use a spell, but you don’t have the energy to cast one, and definitely not a nonverbal one, so he’d hear you either way. 

You feel scared, and pained, and miserable, like you’ll never escape it. 

“I-I can’t, Mister Saltzman.” Your voice is raspy, low from disuse. He replies immediately. 

“I haven’t seen you once since Saturday morning. I thought we agreed that you would make more of an effort to be social this year.” 

You think about Josie, and what you did to her, and how she hasn’t been able to look you in the eye. You think about her and Penelope holding hands, and how Penelope had called her “babe,” and the way Josie had responded. It feels like it just happened, but you know it’s been a day and a half since that fateful morning. It’s like you’ve lost all sense of time. 

  
_ It wasn’t real. _

“I changed my mind,” you say darkly, and you think maybe he hasn’t heard you after a moment of silence. But he has. 

“Open the door and we can talk, Hope. Tell me what’s bothering you.” 

You choke on a sob, and when you hand wraps around your throat to silence it, your fingers touch the imprint of the triangle on your neck. The magic from the other day has faded, and you can almost feel the shape pulsating along with your heart beat. God, you’re so tired. 

_ It wasn’t real. _

“You wouldn’t understand.” You raise your hands to the roots of your hair, and you feel like pulling it out. Your bed is more tempting then ever. What would happen if you just closed your eyes for one second? 

“Was I too hard on you for what happened with Jed? Just let me know so I can help.” 

You want to laugh, because, of course, he thinks there’s something wrong with him. You feel insanely bad, but something deeper won’t let you speak up like you want to. You feel faint, and the need for falling asleep comes easier now. You are extremely tired.

_It wasn’t real._

“No,” you say, yawning, leaning back into your bed. You feel both cold and warm at the same time, and the bones of your hand and arm are stinging in pain. You wonder why they haven’t healed yet, but, ultimately, you’re too tired to care. When you put a hand over your forehead, you find that you’re burning up. 

“Please, Hope, I need something. You haven’t gone to any of your classes for two days. I’ve asked around, and no one’s seen you since Friday. And Josie, God, Josie...” Alaric trails off, but you’ve stopped hearing him. 

“Josie...” you whisper, almost smiling, the pain in your body dimming to a mere buzz. You close your eyes, your face leaning into your pillow. Falling asleep is quicker and easier than blinking.

_It wasn’t real._


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for all your comments! i truly appreciate it :) and i’ll be replying to them by the next day or so!

You wake up to the low light of a hospital infirmary at night. There are voices in the room, and you think they sound like adults. You try to open your eyes but it’s too hard, and you feel like there’s a storm raging behind your forehead.

The pain hits all at once. You cough loudly, and when you try to breath you just end up choking on air—and when you try to bring your hand up to your chest, they’re stuck underneath something. Your hand hurts like hell, and there’s a fire in your belly where your stomach should be. 

There’s also a weight on your shoulder, maybe someone’s hand, and when you can finally open your eyes it’s Alaric. He’s hovering over you with sad, worried eyes, a paper cup of water in his other hand. 

“I’ve got her,” he says, but it feels like you’re underwater and his voice is too weird for you to immediately make sense of it. You realize he’s talking to the nurse just a couple of feet away, who you could recognize if you tried to. 

You swallow thickly, and your ears clear up somewhat. You grab the cup of water, gulping messily before finally opening your mouth. There’s a cast around your arm. 

“Why am I in the hospital wing?” you ask, but your voice is so raspy you have to try again several times. 

“You don’t remember?” he says, and you suddenly feel very, very impatient. 

_ No, I don’t remember _ , you think, a heavy, sinking feeling in your chest. You think of Jean’s son. 

“Did I kill anyone?” you ask, awful fear clenching in your abdomen. Alaric looks taken aback, and you almost sigh in relief. 

“No, no, of course not,” he rushes to say, and when you lean back from where you’re sitting up, your head hits a hard pillow. You realize you’re in a hospital gown, which is pretty stupid. “It’s Wednesday. You’ve been drifting in and out for a while now...”

He stands up, starting to pace the room. You wonder where he’s going with this. 

“At first, we had no idea what happened. MG helped me break down your door yesterday night, and we found you in really bad shape. Your face and legs were covered in blood, and your right arm was broken. Your room looked awful as well, your dresser completely destroyed and your headboard in half. Nothing clicked, until MG noticed there was wolfsbane everywhere in the room.” 

_ Oh god _ , you shut your eyes.  _ He knows. Josie told him.  _

“Hope, you could have come to me. I am, and will always be here for you. We are all here for you. I am so sorry that you thought you couldn’t tell anyone what you were going through.” 

You keep your eyes closed for another second or two, and when you finally open them it’s more painful than the first time. You feel embarrassed for your situation, allowing yourself to lose control just because of that stupid potion. You almost feel relief that he knows, somehow. You truly didn’t remember anything that you done, and him telling you he knows is way better than him telling you that you killed everyone. 

“I-I know. I’m sorry,” you say instead of all the questions you want to ask, because apologies are the only words you know how to say now. He shakes his head, as if that’s not good enough. 

“Hope, you need to know, that no matter how bad things get, or how hard something seems, there is always another option. Taking yourself out of this world is never the right one, and I’m so angry that you thought it was the only—“ 

“What?” you interrupt him, entirely confused. 

_ Shit, he thinks I tried to kill myself.  _

“I’m not blind, Hope. I saw your room, and I saw you. Please don’t try to deny it. Why else would a wolf ingest wolfsbane? The nurse found toxic amounts of it in your bloodstream. I’m lucky you’re even alive.” 

It’s weird, the way he says it.

_ I’m lucky you’re even alive.  _

Like you shouldn’t be lucky because you don’t care about your own life. Like he cares about you. 

You’re split between correcting him and staying silent. It would be so easy to not say anything at all. You try to summon up the bravery to correct him, but it’s a lot harder than it was mere minutes ago. He continues ranting, but you don’t hear a single word. You need to speak up, but your throat is closing up. 

“No, I didn’t try to kill myself,” you tell him, but he’s mumbling, and not paying attention to you. You say it a second time, and when he doesn’t even turn your way you almost yell it. 

He finally listens, stopping still and looking at you in such an emotional way that your eyes drop down. 

“It’s Dorian’s stupid potion. It’s driving me nuts,” you whimper, suffocating on a laugh, the sudden courage choking you. The triangular tattoo on your neck beats in tune with your heart. When you look up, your eyes are filled with tears, and when you blink once they spill and blur your vision.

Alaric sits down next to you on your bed, a hand on your knee for comfort. You tell him everything—about desiderio potum, about Jean Marion, about Zephrine Fentere’s book. About how Josie helped you with the spell. 

When you’re done, and your tears are all dried up, he looks you in the eye and hugs you tightly. So tightly that you forget for a second about everything, so tightly that the wolf growling in your mind quiets for just a moment. 

“Ow,” you laugh, and he laughs, but it’s a sad sound and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“I’m sorry, for assuming—“ he tries, but you cut him off right away. 

“It’s okay,” you say, feeling much better than you have in days. You’re still really tired, but you’re happy that he believed you so easily. You think that maybe a part of him would love to believe anything other than you being suicidal. 

“I’ll talk to Dorian, and we’ll come up with a solution together. I’m going to need that book that you were talking about, though, it might help us out a lot.” You nod, because that makes sense. “And I’m also going to have a talk with Josie—“ 

“No, you’re not.” The words come out before you can stop yourself, and it could probably be taken as a little rude if you and Alaric weren’t so close. “You can’t tell anyone.” 

You immediately regret it, because Alaric looks pretty angry now. 

“You’re not the adult here, Hope. And what, do you think people are going to look at that tattoo and think ‘human’?” 

Your temper rises at Alaric’s own anger and you look down to see that he’s right. Your tattoo is glowing red along with your emotions, and when you clamp a hand over it, it burns your palm. Zephrine Fentere never said  that would happen. 

Alaric seems to lean in at your sharp intake of breath at the pain, trying to get a better look at the mark. 

“How long is that going to last, anyway?” he asks, and you have no real response. 

“I-I don’t know, actually,” you stutter out, which is pretty uncharacteristic for you but you barely think about it twice. You wonder why the mark hasn’t disappeared yet. 

“I’ll just keep reapplying a glamour spell,” you say, and he nods, backing up.

“Alright, I’ll come back in a couple of hours. I’ll try to find out how we can get rid of it, too. Try to get your rest while I’m gone.” 

You thank him quietly, and he starts to walk away, but he stills a couple of feet away. 

“And I won’t tell anyone, I promise.” 

You smile in lieu of an answer, and he finally leaves, but part of you hopes he doesn’t find a way to get rid of the mark. For some reason, you think it keeps you close to Josie, even though you might as well be miles apart. 

She’s never far from your mind, though, and you think that might be what really matters. Why is it that you can only get close to her when it’s not really you? Why is that you allow yourself to do things like kiss her when you’re not in control? 

You also find yourself wondering if she knows where you are right now. You fear and hope that she doesn’t at the same time, because if she does know and she’s not here with you, what does that say? 

You fall asleep again before your brain allows you to overthink it. 

When you wake up, it’s to the loud snores of Alaric sitting in the bedside chair. You throw your empty water cup at him hard, and he wakes up quickly. When you check your phone, you see that it’s twelve o’clock at night. You rub at your eyes sleepily. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Alaric murmurs, slowly blinking awake. He has a leather-bound book in his hand, and he opens it up to take out a yellow post-it note. 

“Right, so I talked to Dorian, and we haven’t been able to come up with anything concrete. Fentere’s notes are helping a lot, and we’re hopeful that we’ll have something by tomorrow. Dorian is trying to alter one of his antidotes to fit your...condition...but so far we have nothing to get rid of the mark.” 

You huff, leaning back into your pillow. You’re disappointed with the news, but the sick, crazed part of you infected by the potion is delighted. If Alaric notices your predicament, he says nothing, only continuing to talk. 

“Well...we have nothing, except, Fentere mentioned—well, he mentioned—“ You scrunch your eyebrows, wondering why he’s so nervous. He opens up another book, which you recognize as Zephrine Fentere’s, and begins to read from a section. 

“‘Due to the peculiarity of the potion, I was not able to develop a counter-spell to my indicator right away—and for this reason, Jane was much annoyed at me. Nonetheless, I later learned that there is such a way to permanently hide the mark proceeding  ostendere voluit ostendas insania.  However, this such counterspell can only be performed by the siphoner of whom originally executed the first incantation.’”

You can’t even digest it completely. 

“Yeah, no, it’s not even that important,” you dismiss, because you aren’t going to ask Josie for help again, and definitely not for something as small as a triangle tattoo. 

“Hope—“ Alaric says, a pained expression on his face, and you can feel the beginning of a scolding coming on. 

“No, really,” you tell him, because it’s fine. 

Everything is fine. Here, in this hospital bed, you can pretend that nothing is wrong. You can pretend that you aren’t hurt that Josie or anyone but Alaric hasn’t visited you. You can pretend that you didn’t force Josie to kiss you, and that you didn’t enjoy it. 

“And anyways, when am I getting this off?” You raise your arm, the one with the cast, exasperation written all over your face. “I don’t even need it. I’m okay.” 

“The nurse should take it off for you tomorrow morning.” Even though you’re obviously trying to change the subject, Alaric lets you. “I talked to her earlier, and she said that she’s willing to release you by Friday morning if you behave well.” 

“Friday morning? It’s only Wednesday. I’ll miss all of my classes, I’ll miss—“  Josie. You don’t finish the sentence.  Want hangs heavy on your tongue. 

“I’m sorry, Hope, but you need rest. You’re seriously sleep-deprived, and the full moon is coming up on Saturday,” he says, like he’s doing you a favor, like it’s just a simple reminder. 

_ I know it’s on Saturday _ , you want to tell him, because you can feel it in your bones with such an intensity you’re sure you’ll shift any second now. You know, because you can’t stop thinking about Josie, and that only happens when your wolf is close to coming out because it’s the only time you’re not a coward. 

“You can’t keep me here for that long,” you grind out, your wolf slipping between your teeth in a warning growl. You clench your uninjured hand underneath the bed sheet. 

“I’m sorry,” he apologies again, but you think he doesn’t sound sorry at all, and then he wishes you a goodnight and leaves. 

For the next day, you drift in and out of consciousness, seeing and remembering next to nothing. You should be feeling better, getting that much sleep, but instead you feel restless, violent with inactivity. You feel like you could snap any second now, but every time you close your eyes you fall back asleep. You have vivid dreams about Josie Saltzman, dreams where you’re the happiest you’ve ever been, and nightmares where you wake up in a fitful panic and forget it a second later. 

You finally wake up Thursday night, itching to do anything at all but ultimately trapped in your bed. You can tell it’s late because the whole infirmary is shut down and the only light on is the one hanging over you. 

You recognize the school nurse’s backside as she signs papers at a desk a couple of yards to your left. You’re dying to ask the question that’s been floating in your mind for the past day or two, but you can’t find the right words. 

The nurse turns around, as if she knows that you’ve been staring at her for the past ten minutes. She walks up to you with her papers and a purse dangling off her shoulder. A flash of light from the ceiling fan allows you to see the name written on the tag on her top. It reads Sylvia Pine. The name is suddenly very familiar, and you wonder how you could’ve forgotten it in the first place. She’s rescued several werewolves after their attempts to overthrow Jed as alpha. You know she’s stopped a bunch of vampire fights as well. 

“Alright, Hope, I’m closing up for the night. There’s a blue pager button to your right if you need anything, and the water jug is just outside if you get thirsty. Is there anything I can do for you before I leave?” 

You start to shake your head before you can stop yourself, and Sylvia begins to turn away. Your head pounds and you suddenly become desperate, sitting up wildly. 

“Wait, actually...” you trail off, and Sylvia stops short, fixing you with her unwavering, compassionate gaze. You look away, clearing your throat roughly. The hospital gown scratches against your shoulders uncomfortably. You burn to remove it, and find some actual clothes. 

“Has anyone been here at all tonight?” Sylvia looks confused now, and dread builds in the pit of your stomach like a wildfire. You think that if you look her in the eye, you might cry. “Like, maybe, the headmaster? Or his daughter?” 

Your last sentence is just barely above a whisper, and Sylvia looks taken aback—she doesn’t respond for a long moment. 

“Hope, I’m sorry...” She looks around the room, focusing on the low dim of the ceiling light. 

“No one’s been in here all night.” 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m so sorry about the wait

True to her word, the nurse releases you Friday morning, but on the condition that you spend the entire day locked up in your room on bed rest. Alaric wakes you up at eight, which is much too early and doesn’t sit well with the headache pounding behind your eyes. 

Sure, you’ve been sleeping for days now, but the energy pulsating in your veins makes all of it restless and futile. 

Alaric walks you to your room an hour after you wake, and you notice quickly that the hallways are empty. You know everyone’s in class and that that’s the reason, but an unsettling feeling fills you all the same. 

The walls feel too small—Alaric’s helping hand on your arm too heavy—the ground beneath your feet too shaky. You feel as though, if you breathe too hard, your lungs might collapse. You’re seriously dreading Saturday night, the call to shift pulling at every thought in your head. 

Your ears are more attuned to your surroundings—your eyes sharper, your tongue tasting venom when it flicks across your canines, the line of your spine curling in on itself when you stretch the right way. 

You release a shuddering breath as you finally step in front of your room’s door, gently easing the knob of the door open. You think you could break it so easily if you didn’t concentrate enough. 

“—And then you’ll accompany me to the game tomorrow as well.” 

“What?” 

You hadn’t realized that Alaric was still talking. You thought he had ended his whole “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility Speech” speech thirty minutes ago. 

“The football game. Against Mystic Falls...on Saturday morning?” he says, as if it’s not the first time you’ve heard of it and he’s just reminding you. 

You knew there was going to be the famous rival game—the school hadn’t been able to stop talking about it for weeks now. You just hadn’t realized it was coming up so soon. You originally weren’t going to go, but thoughts of Josie playing had almost convinced you to want to sit in the stands. 

“Okay, but why am I coming with you?” You shake your head from those thoughts, trying to keep the malice out of your voice but it lingers. 

He looks taken aback, his head leaning away from his shoulders. 

“I thought I explained that...” he whispers underneath his breath, to himself, and you ignore it. “Since the full moon is Saturday night, I thought it’d be best if I...supervised you during the day. To make sure nothing bad happens, you know?” 

Your lips press thinly together, nodding dumbly but you know what he’s actually saying. He’s going to watch over you to make sure you don’t go into a killing spree like Jean Marion’s son. 

A growl reaches your throat, and you cough to clamp it down. 

** How dare he treat us like a child!  **

Your eyes widen dramatically, vaguely wondering where that came from and you cover your mouth as angry words crawl up your throat. You cough again and they’re gone. 

You haven’t had many fights with your wolf since that fateful Monday night, which had momentarily reassured you that the whole potion-danger was over. You’re not so sure now. 

However, Alaric is none the wiser, still ranting on about how it’s his duty to protect you and whatnot. 

“—So I’ll pick you up at eight tomorrow and then we’ll just walk to the field. The game starts at ten, and then after we can go out and have lunch...or something. Does that sound good?” 

Alaric looks nervous now, his hand rubbing against the back of his neck as he fails to meet your eyes. 

“Yeah, that sounds great, actually,” you say, attempting to instill cheerfulness into your voice, but it just sounds fake and your smile cracks seconds later. 

“Good, good.” He nods awkwardly, but you can tell he’s happy that you didn’t reject his offer—mandatory or not. “Well, call me if you need anything. I’ll be in my office. Dorian is coming later tonight to talk to you, and remember you’re confined to your room the entire day. Also, I’ll send someone over after school with all of your missed classwork.”

You frown.

He looks quite pensive suddenly. “Yes, actually, I think I’ll send Lizzie.” 

“Lizzie?” You groan immediately. You had been hoping for—

_ No.  _

“Yes, Lizzie,” he sighs. “I’ll see to it that she brings you lunch, too.” 

“No, no,” you jump. “See to it that she doesn’t come at all.” 

He rolls his eyes, seemingly amused before walking backwards through the door. 

“Be nice,” he calls out, and you hear his footsteps stall out several paces before they disappear altogether. 

You peel off your clothing the second the door clicks behind him, feeling disgusted with yourself. You haven’t been able to shower in days, and you imagine that you must reek. 

The water burns your skin when you step under it, but you’ve grown to like the sting and you don’t move to decrease the temperature. Your hair is knotted terribly, a tangled mess you can’t even begin to run your fingers through. It takes nearly half an hour to brush it out. When you step out of the shower, you almost feel better, but the sight of the mirror destroys any relief your shower brought you. 

The mirror is cracked in half, and there’s dried blood in the shards that make it up. Your room had been entirely normal when you walked in, but you can see now that whoever had cleaned it had forgotten about the bathroom. 

Your reflection is almost too ugly to look at. There’s red streaks along your arms and face from where you had dug your claws nights ago—and you’re briefly surprised that they’re still there until you look again and they’ve disappeared. 

You shake your head. You’re just seeing things. Venom pools in your mouth and you swallow quickly, cringing when it burns your throat. It’s never done that before. 

You wave a hand and the mess is gone, magic dancing at your fingertips. You clench your fist and it pulses through you, dangerous and heavy like it’s never felt before. You feel like someone has poured wet cement into your bloodstream. 

A mantra of animalistic growls resounds in your head—your wolf begging you to give in. You barely manage to take five steps out of the bathroom, tugging on a loose shirt and pants, and then you pass out on your bed. As you hallucinate between dreams and restless sleep, you try to pretend that Josie is laying next to you. That she’s murmuring sweet-nothings into your ear, lulling you to sleep as your fingers entangle themselves into her hair. You pretend that she cares for you, that she wants you, _loves_ you even. But when your hand reaches out it meets tangled sheets and air. 

And when you wake up, it’s not of your own choice. 

Someone is making an awful lot of noise near the desk in your room. Your eyes flash twice before you’re up and out of your bed, blind and completely submissive to your adrenaline. You have a hand around your intruder’s throat before your eyes can flash open a third time. 

You falter a second later when you realize it’s just Lizzie. Your fingers fall limp immediately, but you can still feel her gulping heavily moments after your hand is by your side. The fear that was apparent in her eyes drops just as quickly, replaced by her false bravado. 

You blink once and the gold in your vision is gone. You wonder if she ever really saw it at all. 

“Careful.” Lizzie manages to smirk and sneer all at once. “Just because you can get away with that with my sister doesn’t mean it works on me.” 

She pushes passed you, looking like she’s not even bothered by what she’s just said, before resuming whatever she was doing at your desk. 

Your heart thuds painfully in your chest, the gravity of her sentence weighing heavily on your shoulders. 

It seems to be affecting your vocal cords as well. 

“S-sorry,” you apologize, choosing to verbally ignore whatever she meant by what she said. However, your thoughts catch fire pretty quickly. 

Had Josie told Lizzie about everything?

Or had Lizzie just noticed by herself?

Does Lizzie  _ know _ ? 

You clear your voice, annoyed at how pathetic you feel.

“I thought you were a....burglar, or something,” you say, watching as she seems to search around in her bag. 

“Burglar? This isn’t a suburban neighborhood, Mikaelson.” You sigh, realizing it does sound pretty stupid now. Lizzie seems to want to ignore the entire thing, too, though. 

“Actually. Whatever. I don’t care. Here’s your homework—“ she points to the top corner of your desk, “—and here’s your lunch.” 

She finally finds whatever she was searching for in her bag, taking out a can of beans. You frown, picking the can up and inspecting it. 

They’re pinto beans, and when you turn the can over to the back you see an expiration date that has already passed. 

“I am not eating this.” 

You hand it back to her, but she doesn’t allow you to and the can drops to the floor. You bite down the snarl in your throat when the sound rings painfully in your ears. 

“Well, you don’t really have a choice. Since you can’t leave your room,” she states shortly, picking up her bag and making her way to the door.

“I can literally just walk out,” you tell her, but she doesn’t look very alarmed.

“Actually, you can’t. I spelled your room. Good luck with that,” she says, her back to you as she reaches for the doorknob. Her nonchalance and almost disinterest with you slightly hurts. Did no one really care that you were gone? 

“I have magic, too. I can just unlock it,” you retort, your brows knitting together. You wonder why she’s being so difficult at the same time.

“Maybe, but my spell will tell me if you do.” Lizzie turns around to smile like ice, and you look away slightly disturbed. 

She’s already walking out the next second, and you don’t bother to tell her goodbye or wish her a good day, because you’re not friends and it’s not like she visited you while you were in the infirmary. 

She stops with her hand around the door knob though, and it makes your own body pause just as well. The room suddenly feels cold, and you wonder if maybe that’s Lizzie’s spell as you shiver lightly. 

Maybe it’s just you. 

“I guess..” Lizzie mutters, like she’s in pain. “I’m glad you’re not dead.” You smile, a heavy feeling in your chest that almost suffocates you with the strength of it, but she doesn’t see it and you don’t bother replying. She leaves a second later. 

You focus your attention on the desk, eyeing the pile of homework situated on it. You wish you had remembered to thank her, but she’s already gone and regret sits heavy in your gut. 

You have about fifty pages of work that you missed, but you ignore all of it to go searching for your Traditional Magic work. You find a yellow sticky note at the top of it, purple pen looping out pretty words. 

You recognize it as Josie’s handwriting, and underneath it you find almost ten pages of notes on desiderio potum. When you examine them, they’re all done in the same purple pen, the neatness never faltering despite the extent of the notes. 

It makes you suddenly immensely happy that Josie decided to give you her notes to copy, that she even wanted to help you at all. It makes you forget—just for one blissful second—that she hadn’t bothered to visit you while you were sick. 

Maybe it’s—

Maybe it’s for the best.

You wonder why Dorian decided to make everyone take more notes on the potion, but you decide that you don’t care and you forget about it easily enough. You find another sticky note on the bottom of the last page. It reads:

** Don’t worry about coming to class until we solve this. I will see you tonight at six.  **

By the black-inked, strict handwriting, you figure it’s Dorian’s. You look for more sticky notes, but atlas, there aren’t any and you’re left disappointed. 

Did Josie really have nothing to say to you at all? 

You frown, setting down all the papers back on your desk. 

Does she really not care?

You feel painfully ignored and terribly tired. If you focus enough, you can swear you can still feel Josie’s skin underneath your fingertips. If you close your eyes just right, just long enough, you can almost imagine her lips on yours again. 

How could she forget so easily? 

You sigh—the exhale barely escaping your lips—and then you prepare yourself to settle in and try to at least start some of the work. 

However, two hours later you’ve only copied down a page and a half. You’re overcome with exhaustion so quickly, and very briefly, you have the sudden thought that you wish this could all be over. 

That you could just change into your wolf and be done with it. You pace the room messily to distract yourself, almost tripping on the small carpet near your bed several times. 

You actually do end up tripping on it after the fifth time, and you grab for the nearest object, which happens to be your bed frame. The right pole crumples in your grip, and you get up immediately stumbling back. The sudden strength has you itching to destroy more, but you don’t want a repeat of Monday. 

You unclench your fist slowly, the wooden pieces falling to the floor as you sit down on your bed miserably. How had your life changed so fast? Or had it always been like this, and you had never noticed? 

You shake your head at yourself, running your hands crazily through your hair. A knock at the door sounds, and your head jolts up from between your hands. Was it six o’clock already? 

You rush to the door, sensing Dorian’s breathing pattern as your hand turns the doorknob. That’s the best part of the full moon, you think—the power of your supernatural senses in the days leading up to it. It allows you to see others and hear them much more clearly. 

Dorian looks happy to see you, and you know that you’re happy to see him to. He hugs you immediately, almost strongly enough to lift you off the ground. You smile against the hard press of his cheek, and he greets you softly. 

“I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to see you,” he starts. You open your mouth to interrupt him, but he holds a hand up. “I know how lonely you must have felt. But I’ve been searching relentlessly for something to help you. Alaric and I haven’t been able to come up with much so far, but Fentere’s writings have really helped. I’ve also been concentrating on aspects of the original desiderio potum antidote, and I’m hoping that we can modify it accordingly.” 

He explains that he hasn’t been able to read Fentere’s book completely, but that he’s confident he’ll find something soon. He also mentions the idea of attaining more of Fentere’s works to get a better idea of what you’re dealing with.

“Thank you,” you tell him quietly, and you pause uncertainly, not sure of what to say. Dorian looks at the ground and you can tell something uncomfortable is coming. 

“Of course,” he responds, but you know he’s not done. “But, I have to ask. I feel...I feel like I offered you so many opportunities to come out and share what you were going through. Why didn’t you?” 

You look down to your feet, your eyes like lead and you can’t meet his eyes. Flashes of yourself holding Josie against the wall stutter in your mind like a broken camera. 

You blink, and a tear slips unbidden through your eyelash and to the floor. When you look back up, your eyes are clear, but there’s a painful lump in your throat you can’t keep down and your heart is shaking in your chest. 

“Did you read Jean Marion’s journal?” you murmur, very, very weakly and Dorian leans in to hear you better. He seems surprised at the question. 

“Well...no...Alaric’s been hogging it, quite frankly,” he admits, a hardened look in his eye as he stares at you. 

“Then you don’t know what I’ve _done_,” you say, sitting back onto your bed. You focus on the door behind him, remembering how you had assaulted Josie. “What I’ve...been _thinking_.” 

“Then make me understand,” Dorian tells you, but it’s not that easy. How could you admit—to anyone, let alone a teacher—what you’ve allowed to have happened? How could you tell him that you’re a monster? 

You take too long to respond and Dorian speaks again. 

“It’s okay if you’re having...violent thoughts.” His voice booms in the silent room. You think he doesn’t know the half of it. “It’s not your fault. You can get through this.”

“It’s not—“ you try to say, but the words get stuck half-way out. How do you explain your sick fantasies? How do you explain the way you had pinned Josie and had bitten her like some wild animal? “It’s not like that.” 

Your hand comes up to rub against the triangle tattoo on your neck, and shutting your eyes you can almost feel the gentle press of Josie’s fingers there. 

When you open your eyes, it’s to see clarity in Dorian’s own. 

“Hope,” he says dangerously, and you dread his words like hot coals in your stomach. “I wouldn’t ask this if it wasn’t important.” 

“Hope,” he calls again when he thinks you’re not paying attention, and you finally look up at him. He holds your gaze. His next words come out uncharacteristically slowly, like he can barely comprehend them himself. “Do you have...feelings...for anyone? 

You nod—almost imperceptibly—and he sighs, taking a step back but his feet don’t move. 

“This changes everything.” 

You ignore his answering words, but you can’t ignore his defeated look and the almost-fear in his eyes. What had become different for him to suddenly look so scared? 

“It’s not my fault,” you rush to stutter out. “I didn’t want to have this stupid fucking crush. The potion ruined everything.” 

But they’re just lies, and you could blame it on the potion all you want but you’ve deeply adored Josie for a couple of months now, years even. 

“Hope, the desire drink doesn’t work like that.” Dorian looks sad, a pitying gaze on his face, and you simmer in anger. He’s looking at you like you’re a child and you’ve just worked out that you have to grow up one day. 

“What do you mean?” you ask, placing a cold hand against your forehead as it begins to pound. You’re suddenly freezing. 

“It can’t—it can’t make you fall in love with someone you don’t already have feelings for, it just forces you to come to terms with them.” 

“What?” You can’t believe him. Your voice sounds hollow to your own ears. If Josie knows this, then you’re screwed. You’ve always wanted her to know your feelings, but now that you’re faced with the reality of the situation you don’t want any part in it. “But you said during class that it replicates emotions.” 

“Emotions that are already there,” he clarifies. “It gives one the confidence to produce them outside of their own mind. The witch sisters never succeeded in making an actual love potion, as it’s well-known for. No magic can solve unrequited desire. I am sorry if I...misled you.” 

_Misled_? You want to fucking laugh. You had always known that you liked Josie, and you could pretend that it was all the potion in the privacy of your mind, but now you don’t even have that. 

“Does...” _Does Josie know?_ “Have you explained that detail to anyone else in class?” 

“Well, no, actually. I should probably cover that during notes on Monday.” Your first response is to sigh in relief, but your second is to recoil. 

“More notes?” you groan. “I still have to copy down like eight more pages.” 

“Sorry,” he grins, and then the seriousness of the moment passes. It comes back a second later when you remember something he said mere moments ago. 

“What did you mean earlier—when you said that this changes everything?” you ask, and Dorian’s eyes widen as if he’s just remembered too. 

“It’s not really told in any of the history books but—actually, do you remember the story I told you about in class? I think you mentioned him earlier, Jean Marion? The father and son werewolf pair? Well when Jean Marion’s son fell underneath the effects of the potion, his crush on one of the witches turned into maddening obsession. His wolf knew that they were soulmates, and did not understand the chastity of courting and romance. When the full moon came, he pushed himself onto her, and she did not welcome his advances. He then raped and killed her, and his anger about her ‘betrayal’ caused him to kill dozens after.

“However, Marion’s son’s case is a unique one. As noted by Fentere, most of his case studies did not display violent tendencies unless...unless they were enamored with another,” he finishes solemnly. 

  
“In other words, we knew you had the potential to act...dangerously...but now you have the capability as well.”   
  


You want to ask him what the difference between potential and capability is, but you think you already know the answer. Maybe that’s the point of you wanting to ask, so he can give you a different answer.  
  
  


It’s almost eight by the time Dorian leaves, and he bids you goodbye after telling you that you don’t actually have to come to his class anymore until the entire desire drink project is done. 

However, your conversation with him never strays far from your mind and you overthink what Dorian told you the entire night. You can’t help but wonder if you had...sexually assaulted...Josie. She had reciprocated, hadn’t she? But then again, you had hallucinated wolfsbane many times before, and what if what happened was just another hallucination?

Had you actually hurt her, and you just didn’t remember right? Is that why she’s been ignoring you? You would never consciously do that, and you know you would die before intentionally hurting her, but you can’t help but fucking _wonder_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully you guys enjoyed the chapter. i have most of the next one written up so that should be out soon :)
> 
> here was one of my notes when i was writing the next chapter: josie gets jealous


	13. Chapter 13

Alaric greets you up and early at eight in the morning with a smile on his face and a protein bar in his hand. You grumble and accept the food offering, still rubbing at your eyes. When you had finally gone to sleep last night, it was wholly unproductive and you spent much of the early hours of the morning tossing and turning.

“How are you feeling?” Alaric asks you as you two begin your walk out of the dorms. 

_ Like I could snap and change into my wolf at any second.  _

“Good,” you say instead, despite the fire in your nails as they burn to turn into claws—despite the throbbing of your teeth as they long to expand into sharp fangs—despite the heat in your vision as you attempt to not let any gold in your eyes.

He nods, making a comment about the weather as a window comes into view, and then he starts to talk business. 

“Alright, so we’re going to head straight to the field since I have to talk to the Mystic Falls’ principal before the game. You can do whatever you want, just make sure you ask me first or at least stay in my line of vision, please,” he requests as you finally finish the food he gave you. 

You become antsy with irritation, dimly wondering why you have to ask his permission for  anything . Your ill temper must show on your face, because Alaric speaks up again. 

“I’m really sorry, but it’s just a precaution. You remember what happened with Jed, don’t you?” 

You nod solemnly, and your stomach growls despite the granola bar sitting in it. Alaric takes a single look at you before making a left down the hallway and changing his direction to where the kitchen is. 

You grab some fruit and then you start to walk back to the direction of the field. The field is already surrounded by many students when you and Alaric get there, the sudden noise and smell of at least three hundred people almost too triggering for you and you breathe slowly through your mouth. 

You catch Josie in her usual pre-game outfit talking to Kaleb and Penelope by the left side of the field almost immediately, the air suddenly feeling suffocating with the scent of cinnamon and vanilla. You shut your eyes, trying to look away but that just makes everything worse and your legs feel like heavy boulders. You think you can barely walk.

“Can I go to the bathroom?” you ask Alaric quickly because you don’t trust yourself and your mouth is watering for a reason you don’t even want to think about. 

“Sure, just stay safe and—“ he starts, but you don’t acknowledge it and you’re already gone. 

The bathroom is somewhat secluded from the football field, not even a hundred feet away from the forest line. 

It’s not a common bathroom to use, actually. There’s one much closer to the field that is more frequently used during these kinds of events. 

You’re almost twenty feet away from the entrance when you catch a spot of purple in a bush near the tree line. You look away, not recognizing it at first, but at second glance you realize it’s wolfsbane. 

Panic squeezes through your stomach like a black hole, and when you inhale you find you can’t breathe. 

_ What the fuck is that doing there?  _

You cough out—something between a sob and a whimper—and when you close your eyes you only see Josie and Penelope together. 

A sudden cheering comes from the football field, and it’s almost too much at once. You stumble into the bathroom, not even checking if it’s empty.

It’s too loud, and clamping your hands over your ears doesn’t stop any of it. When you flick your tongue over your teeth, you taste blood, and the desire for more is almost uncontrollable despite the fact that it’s your own. 

Blood rushes to your ears and pounds beneath your forehead, a mess of sounds making you cringe into yourself. It’s too noisy, and you can’t even think, you can’t even fucking blink, or get your eyes to open, it’s so fucking bad. Your head is in your hands, your elbows against the sink as you lean forward heavily. You don’t know how long you stay in that position. 

“Are you okay?” The words are whispered from your right sometime after you’ve lost your mind, just barely spoken—perhaps like it was a mistake to utter them in the first place—and you startle immediately. You jump slightly, and your hand hits the corner of the sink, breaking a small piece off of it. The spell you had been under breaks suddenly, like a fog wiped clean, and you turn your attention to the body of the voice. 

She’s young, definitely around your age, with blonde hair and brown eyes that unusually spark in concern for someone that you don’t recognize at all. She might be slightly shorter than you, but you can’t tell well enough, and she’s wearing track pants and a tight grey t-shirt with the words “Mystic Falls” on it. 

You wonder how you didn’t hear anyone come into the bathroom. 

“U-uh, yeah, yeah,” you nod, gulping loudly. You try to play it off, but it doesn’t work and instead you look like an idiot with a deep as hell voice. You cough to clear the lump in your throat, and a drop of water hits the sink underneath you. You blink once before turning away from her and hitting the sink nozzle to start washing your hands.

“Do you go to this school?” she speaks up from behind you.

_ Damn it, she’s trying to make conversation.  _

Through the mirror you can see her eyeing the piece of sink on the floor. You hadn’t even felt the hit, and when you flex your fingers, your strength pulses through your veins like a storm. 

There’s no use in being rude, so you nod lightly, reaching for a paper towel. You can feel her eyes on you, which doesn’t feel entirely bad, but you would prefer it if she would just use the bathroom and let you leave. You definitely appreciate her, though—the presence of a stranger was enough to shock you out of whatever stunt you were in. 

“Yeah,” you say again, feeling slightly repetitive. “Are you here to watch the game?” 

You’re not very good at talking to strangers, which is made obvious by this situation here. 

“Something like that,” she chuckles, a warm timbre in her voice that has you staying rooted to your spot. You think that it’s nice to be treated normal. Everyone at the Salvatore school treats you like a villain. “I’m Emma.” 

“Hope,” you give her your name, because it’s only fair. Emma looks down to the ground, her finger twirling a strand of her golden hair. You feel awkward. Would it be impolite to leave now? 

You probably couldn’t without body-checking her to the floor, as she’s blocking the exit and Alaric would kill you if the district superintendent had to make another visit to the school. 

“So...do you play football?” She looks up at you through her eyelashes, her eyes twinkling despite the lack of light in the bathroom.

_ What the fuck?  _

You raise your eyebrows at her, and she continues speaking. 

“You look like you’re...active.” She pauses before the last word, placing an eerie emphasis on it as she looks you up and down. You wonder what changed for her to suddenly be looking at you...like that. 

You take the time to look down at your own outfit, and you wonder what the hell she’s talking about because you’re wearing sweatpants and a loose t-shirt. 

“_Right_,” you drawl sarcastically, but you think she might not get the inflection of your tone because she smiles. “But no, I don’t play. I’m just...” 

_ Here against my own free will?  _

_ Here because I’ve been poisoned by a love potion and can snap at any moment and kill everyone?  _

“Watching,” you decide, because she’s just human. You realize you’ve taken too long to reply because she’s looking at you weird. 

“Do you usually—“ She cuts herself off quickly as her eyes flit up to the clock up on the wall behind you. Alarm strikes her face. “Shit, it’s nine already? Sorry, I have to find my friends.” 

Emma rushes forward and takes two paper towels out of the dispenser before waving goodbye to you. 

“It was so nice to meet you. See you around!” she calls out, her back to you as she practically jogs out of the bathroom. 

You shake your head, a small sound finding its way passed your throat and you find yourself frowning despite the pleasant feeling in your gut. Had she been flirting with you?

That was definitely one of the strangest encounters you’ve ever had with another high school student, but it is also one of the easiest ones to pretend never happened. 

_Whatever_. 

You kick the sink corner piece underneath the bathroom stall not unlike your habit of kicking ice underneath the fridge as a child that you could never shake. You’re already walking back to the field when you realize that Emma had never even used the bathroom. You hadn’t either. 

Alaric looks pissed off when you find him near one of the benches. The team is stretching in the middle of the field, and you dodge around his searching eyes for a glimpse of Josie. 

“Where were you?!” Alaric almost yells, and you look around embarrassed to see if anyone heard. You know you were only gone for a couple of minutes. 

“In the bathroom. I told you that,” you say, beginning to grow angry yourself. You rush to correct yourself. “No, actually, I had to ask your permission.” 

You laugh humorlessly, smiling sarcastically with furious eyes. 

“This isn’t a joke, Hope. It’s been thirty minutes! I thought you—“

_Had died_? 

_Had killed dozens in a murderous rage_?

The fire in Alaric’s eyes dies almost immediately, his words stopping short. If you listened closely, you would hear that he’s breathing too hard. Yet, the question remains—is he scared for you, or for everyone else?

“It doesn’t matter,” he finds his words a moment or two after, looking away awkwardly. You wish you could go back into the bathroom and hide for the rest of the morning. “Here’s a clipboard. You’re taking stats.” 

He tosses it at you, missing by a mile, and your hand shoots out to the right to grab it as it flies through the air. 

Alaric walks away without seeing if his throw hit his mark, and you sit down on the bench behind the actual players’ bench grumbling. You know he made you lunge for the clipboard on purpose. 

You watch the team do warm-ups for half an hour, feeling bored out of your goddamn mind with nothing to do but stare at the blank sheet of paper on the clipboard in front of you. 

You wonder why they’re all warming up so thoroughly when they’re doomed to lose anyways. Not because they suck, of course, but because people might get suspicious if they do win. 

_ Keeping up appearances, I guess.  _

Your eyes find Josie among the dozen of bodies, heat shooting to your cheeks as you see that she’s facing your direction and could potentially catch you. 

You look down to the grass quickly, but it’s as if she’s right in front of you as you remember how small her shorts are and how fitting her shirt is. You can almost make out the black paint in lines across her face. You vaguely wonder where Penelope went. 

“Hope?” You look up at the familiar voice, surprised to find Emma in front of you in a Mystic Falls football uniform. 

_ “Are you here to watch the game?” _

_ “Something like that.”  _

“Emma,” you greet, slightly nervous that you got her name wrong but she doesn’t correct you, so you figure you’re fine. 

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” she says, and something about how she shuts her mouth quickly makes you think she didn’t mean to say that. You wonder why she’s acting like you’re best friends and she hasn’t seen you in five years. “How’s ‘watching’ going?” 

“Actually, I’m now the designated ‘stats taker,’” you say, motioning to the clipboard in your lap. She laughs, sitting down next to you. Her bare thigh almost touches yours as she leans too close. 

“By the way, how many points is a touchdown?” you ask, and her eyes widen dramatically. 

“Are you serious?” she replies, almost as if she’s deeply disturbed. 

“No,” you smirk. “That was a joke.” You’ve never allowed yourself to be this casual with another person, but you think you’re definitely growing used to the idea as a smile widens against your lips. 

“You’re not funny,” she says, but she laughs, poking you in the stomach. 

“Ow,” she says a second later, retracting her finger to herself. “Is your stomach made of rocks or something?” 

You raise one of your eyebrows as you watch her hand come closer to your abdomen once again, poking you for a second time and then a third as if she’s conducting an experiment. You almost shy away, but part of you knows that might be seen as rude and instead you stay incredibly still. 

“Having fun there?” you ask, suddenly terribly uncomfortable. You don’t want to ruin whatever this is, but you’re sort of in public and you’d rather watch Josie from her place at the field. Emma ignores you for a couple of seconds longer, and then pulls her hand away. 

The game is almost starting, and you begin to grow confused as to why she’s even here with you instead of with her team. 

“Daniels, stop flirting and get your ass over here!” The voice is that of a gruff man’s, and when you turn to get a better look at him he’s already eyeing you with disdain. You recognize him as Mystic Falls’ coach, and when Emma startles with panic you realize he’s talking to her.

“Sorry,” she whispers to you, her cheeks red with embarrassment and you feel slightly bad that you got her in trouble. 

She pats your knee twice before finally getting up and hurrying over to where her coach is, which is not even fifteen feet away from in front of you. 

You eavesdrop on their conversation without meaning to. 

“You owe me fifty suicides at practice tomorrow morning for getting distracted before a game,” the coach tells Emma, and she automatically talks back to him, which makes you weirdly proud. You think you could be good friends. 

“But—“ she tries again after he shuts her down twice. 

“You know my rules,” he cuts her off sharply, one last time, and then walks away from her to gather the rest of the team, turning back briefly to pin you with a deep glare. You look away immediately, trying to act like you weren’t listening in but it was rather obvious what you were doing. 

You turn your attention back to looking around for Josie, but you don’t find her and disappointment sucks like a vacuum in your gut. You see Lizzie ruthlessly berating her teammates for doing a stretch incorrectly, but her twin sister is nowhere to be found. You can’t do a completely thorough search, however, because Emma, her coach, and her teammates are blocking your view and you don’t want to look crazy craning your neck like a lunatic. 

“I’m gonna do it.” 

Your ears pick it up immediately, and you could lie and say you weren’t listening for her, but there’s no other reason you would take advantage of your supernatural senses like this. You lean in at an attempt to hear Josie better. You can tell now that the siphoner is just passed Emma’s head. If you shift your head just right, you can see that she’s talking to Kaleb in the far lower corner of the field. 

“—C’mon, Jo, it’s not worth it,” Kaleb says, wringing his hands together like he’s nervous. It’s not often that you see that. 

You barely catch the tail end of whatever Kaleb says when something shifts in the corner of your eye—the large jug of water meant for the players. It’s steadily drawing closer to Emma, moving somehow on its own. 

“Shit,” you murmur, and there’s not enough time for you to perform a spell to stop it. If you tried to wave your hand to nonverbally do it, someone might catch you. You can’t risk it. 

You’re not very worried because it’s only a jug of water and the worst damage it can do is get her wet, but Emma’s playing a game in ten minutes and it would be inconsiderate not to warn her, especially after she helped you. 

“Watch out!” you yell, getting up from your spot on the bench. The clipboard falls forgotten on the grass. 

You easily cross the couple of feet Emma is away from you, holding a hand out just as it reaches her, but the sudden jolt is too much for the large jug and it sprays messily against the both of you, even managing to dampen the Mystic Falls’ coach’s socks. 

He splutters like water is in his mouth, but the water didn’t go anywhere near the top half of his body and you frown in annoyance.

There’s a huge wet stain across the front of your sweatpants like you’ve just peed yourself, and Emma isn’t faring much better. Her entire top is soaked through, and she shivers as a breeze hits the both of you. 

“How did that even happen?!” she asks to no one in particular, but her eyes are closed and she’s still in shock.It wasn’t even that big a deal, really, but from looking at her, one would think she was just nearly drowned. 

“I don’t know,” you answer, because you don’t. The jug couldn’t have been moving on its own with it being this sunny out, and the only possible excuse is magic—

Your eyes fly up to where you last saw Josie and Kaleb, and a glow of red from where Josie’s hand and Kaleb’s forearm was connected starts to simmer down. Your eyes meet hers from across the field, a streak of surprise lighting up your eyes momentarily. You watch her as she basically glares at Emma, which is totally uncalled for. 

_ Did Josie cause this?  _

The Timberwolves huddle again, Emma’s teammates laughing at her and eyeing you curiosity, and then Alaric calls his own team to the bench. Josie’s too busy looking down to even glance in your direction as she comes toward the both of you. You shiver lightly as the coldness of being soaked through finally hits you. Half of your hair is wet, and you imagine that it’s already frizzing up. Alaric catches your eye, looking as if he’s just noticed you. So much for his responsibility of watching you. 

“What happened to you?” he asks obliviously, and you meet Josie’s eyes from where she’s standing across the two benches. She drops her eyes immediately to the ground, and you almost sigh out loud that she can’t even look at you. 

“Nothing,” you spit out, dropping your own eyes and grabbing the clipboard off the ground—finding your seat again. You probably have no right to be upset at Josie, but you can’t shake the misery of her ignoring you and then pulling this crap. You had kissed, for God’s sake, and then she had jumped into a relationship with Penelope. 

You don’t have much time to think about it before the game starts. 

The captain are called to the middle of the field to shake hands and flip the coin, and you notice that Josie looks irritated. It’s not so apparent on her face, but you can tell by the way her legs approach the referee stiffly and by the way her eyebrows knit together. 

The referee flips the coin and it lands in favor of Mystic Falls, which only appears to aggravate Josie further. She crosses her arms and walks away, and the Timberwolves choose to have first possession. 

The game starts off very slowly, and you get bored just as easily, choosing to stare at Josie rather than pay attention to the actual game. You notice that Emma is taking the position of quarterback. She’s good—quick and fast where she needs to be, and she has a good arm. You wonder why she’s not a team captain. 

It’s tied by the first quarter, a touchdown scored by Kaleb and one by the brunette captain of the other team. At one point in the second quarter, Emma and Josie are facing each other directly. They’re pretty close to the bench, and it’s Mystic Falls’ ball. You notice that Emma is shaking slightly, her clothes still wet from earlier despite twenty minutes having passed. 

It shocks you immensely when Josie speaks up. 

“Cold?” she asks, but it’s not curiously, and the spite in her voice slightly scares you. Emma looks back at her in confusion at the malicious tone, and you wonder briefly how differently she would be acting if she knew magic existed. You lean forward to hear more, but nothing else is said. 

Emma doesn’t respond, looking away and murmuring something to her teammates. You can’t catch it, and then the ball is thrown and the play is started. The reciever—the tall brunette captain—is already far down the field and near the end zone. Emma prepares herself to throw the ball down, waiting for an opening and finds one. 

She throws the ball, and then is promptly tackled by another body, her flag mangled on the grass, pulled a second before she was pushed roughly down to the floor. 

The ball finds its target, and the stands erupt in cheers as Mystic Falls scores another touchdown. They quiet quickly as they notice the two girls fighting and rolling around on the dirt. You know the other girl is Josie immediately, her shorts rolled obscenely high on her thigh as she picks herself up from the floor, dirt smeared over her legs. Emma follows a second later, pushing Josie’s shoulders lightly. 

“What the fuck was that?” she curses quite loudly, and your sharp gaze catches a cut on her cheekbone. The referee quickly interferes, grabbing Josie and she bucks wildly against his hold. She calms down a second later, as if she’s remembered herself. Lizzie is screaming something but you can’t hear it. Kaleb is laughing, and you roll your eyes with his level of maturity. Alaric throws his stupid baseball cap down on the floor in anger, and you can already tell he’s very disappointed in Josie. The referee calls a penalty for unnecessarily roughing the passer after the ball was thrown and Mystic Falls gets an automatic first down. 

Josie walks away first, escorted to the bench by the referee and Alaric pins her with a look of dismay. When you look at Emma on the field, she’s holding her left side and favoring her right foot. Her teammates help her limp to the bench, and you wonder where everything went wrong. 

The rest of the game passes in a blur, Emma returning to the field in the the last quarter of the second half, but Josie stays on the bench the entire game. Lizzie gives a motivational speech about losing, and Mystic Falls wins 40-7. 

You’re looking around for Josie when Emma approaches you again before she gets on the bus back to her own school. Her ankle is already bandaged with athletic tape, but she’s smiling despite the pain you know she’s in. 

“Are you okay?” you ask her, because it’s the obvious question. 

“Yeah,” she laughs, and your moment in the bathroom from earlier springs to mind, except the roles are reversed. “That girl was...crazy.” 

Anger sparks in your eyes at the last word before you can stop it, and you valiantly try to hide it. You can’t, though, and a frown reaches your lips. 

“It was a mistake,” you say, rushing to defend Josie. You’re not sure you should. “She didn’t mean to.” 

“Right,” Emma nods along with you, a sarcastic grin on her face. “Her fist hit my face on accident.” 

“Exactly,” you agree, and Emma’s laugh is contagious and you find yourself laughing, too. 

The bus is basically just waiting for Emma in order to leave, and you can hear the grumbles of some of her teammates that want to get home already. 

“Hurry up!” Emma’s coach yells at her from within the vehicle. 

“I’m coming,” she replies, and then looks back at you. 

“I guess I’ll see you around?” she says, very hesitant. You find yourself unsure as well. 

“Yeah,” you agree, and her eyes shift from left to right before taking out her phone. 

“Can I get your number?” she asks, a goofy smile on her face. You give her a look and she sighs. “Not like that.” 

“Sure,” you relent after a couple of seconds, because if you’re busy you could always just not text her back. She types your number into her contact list and then she’s walking backwards into the bus. 

“I’ll text you!” 

And then she’s gone. You smile, turning around and instantly making eye contact with Josie Saltzman. Your smile drops, and you get the worse feeling that you’ve done something wrong. 

The siphoner looks away quickly, walking away just as fast and your own feet pick up speed before you can think otherwise. 

“Josie!” you call out, but she doesn’t still and your hand is around her wrist to stop her because you’re not thinking. She turns around suddenly, ready to snap, and you’re face to face before you can blink. Her nose is an inch or two from your own, and her lips are so close to yours that you’re overwhelmed with an intense craziness. 

“Don’t touch me,” she bites out, terribly venomous, and then she pushes you gently away from her. You retract your hands, keeping them at your sides rigidly. Hurt washes across your chest in tight waves, and you feel as though you might drown with the intensity of it. 

“Please,” you implore, becoming irritated at yourself for sounding this desperate. She gave up on you—it’s over already, you know, but you can’t stop yourself from needing her like an incessant fool. “I feel like we need to talk.” 

“I-I’m sorry. I can’t. Please stop.” 

You’re too surprised by the pain in her voice to stop her when she walks away from you again, and you let her, feeling too tired to even open your mouth again. 

You get the swift urge to shift and get away, to run as fast as your feet can carry you into the woods. The field has mostly cleared, and it’s been almost an hour after the game has ended. If you could make it to the trees right now, no one would see you. It’s too tempting, and you find yourself running seconds after your wolf presents you with the offer. 

The bones in your arm breaks the second you make it into the forest, and you almost sigh in relief despite the pain. It’s been too long. You scream when your shoulders dislocate at the same time, your collarbone coming out of place just after and it’s too much. There’s no relief anymore, and you feel like it’ll never end. 

You need to stop. Alaric would be so mad, and Dorian would be so disappointed. You’re endangering everyone else just by entertaining the idea, but that doesn’t stop you from allowing your claws to pop out. It doesn’t stop your incisors from extending until they’re nearly poking your lips. You finally double over when the bones in your feet shatter, the ones in your hands just reforming. You grab a clump of grass to steady yourself and then you scream. 

You scream out all the misery and torture you’ve been under since this stupid potion decided to fuck up your life and steal Josie away from you. It takes a second to remember that Josie was never yours, and you ruined that all by yourself. You can’t change into your wolf, not until you’re in one of the werewolf transformation spaces at least, because you’ll only ruin things more. You just need to take a breath, if you could figure out how. 

The muscles in your abdomen shake, the ones across the expanse of your back rippling. You need to stop this now. 

You let go of the ground you had been using to distract yourself from the pain, and your legs feel so, so heavy as you try to stand on them. They haven’t fixed themselves yet, and it will be hours before you let them fully do it. You can’t allow this to happen now. 

Your knee buckles from underneath you, and then you’re on the ground again. You can’t allow this to happen. You need to stop. You need to find Josie and talk to her. That’s the only way you will feel better. 

_ You need to find Josie.  _


	14. Chapter 14

_ You need to find Josie.  _

You repeat the words over and over again, like a disastrous motto, and your spine makes a snapping noise before all the pain ends at once. 

You use the unexpected gift you’ve been provided to your advantage, deciding that you should get the fuck out of here before the pain starts again. Because you know it will. And besides, you need to find Josie. 

You nearly sprint out of the forest, and when you get passed the end of the tree line, you see that the sky is dark and nearly black. You never noticed it before. 

_ How long have I been in the forest?  _

Although everything hasn’t settled completely in your body, you make it to the school surprisingly quickly. You walk through the entrance, and when you remember that Alaric is probably looking for you and it’s supposedly been hours since you deserted him, you decide to at least achieve some inch of stealth. You focus your eyes and ears on the sights and smells around you, paying close attention to any hint of Alaric, but mainly focusing on Josie. You imagine that Alaric is very upset at you both ways. 

What’s worse, maybe, is that when you fish your phone out of your pocket, you find at least ten missed calls from him. You have a single text message from Emma. 

You put your phone back away, ducking your head as you continue to navigate the halls searching for Josie. You grow constantly more aggravated as you don’t find her. You begin to have the sick, foolish idea that she’s _hiding_ from you. An alarm blares from above you before the idea can fully fester, and then the intercom comes on a second later. You immediately recognize Alaric’s voice. 

“Attention all staff and students, there is a tiger on the loose. I repeat, there is a tiger on the loose. Please remain indoors, and travel in pairs at all times.” The intercom switches off a second later, but the words repeat in your head moments after. 

_ There is a tiger on the loose. _

That was the school’s code words for danger. Every year Alaric had repeated it during the annual lockdown drills, and every year you had ignored it. 

You still have half the mind to ignore it now, but you’re confused as to why Alaric called one in the first place. Unless...unless you’re the reason and he thinks that you’re dangerous. It wouldn’t be a far cry out from all the caution Alaric and Dorian have been treating you with lately. 

But he couldn’t. Right?

He wouldn’t betray you like that, and he would understand why you disappeared. He wouldn’t betray you. That’s what you need to remember, but it’s becoming difficult to hold onto the thought. Deep down, you realize that your mind is taking a turn too far. But all you can think about is the way he had snapped at you before the game and the way he had held you on a tight leash during it. 

Making you come to the game was one thing, following you around and constantly checking up on you was another, but this is something different altogether. How crazy does he think you are to order a lockdown? 

You’re not some rabid fucking animal that foams at the mouth at the sight of others. You thought he had the decency to trust you in that aspect. But he’s just like everyone else, treating you like you’re an evil monster when all you’ve ever wanted is to help and be loved. 

They’re all the same. Except for Josie. She helped you when she easily couldn’t have, and you just need to find her. You need to explain to her that she belongs to you, and you to her. Everything will be alright when you find Josie and tell her that you’re meant to be. 

However, soon after that thought, the bones in your foot that had healed from earlier break again, and a whimper is ripped from your throat before you can clamp your lips together. There’s a large window across from you, and your eyes are pulled to it like a spell, tracing the white-yellow moon in the dark sky. It’s nearly full, and you think it would be so simple to just turn now underneath the glow of it. Your father had always told you that denying the shift would make it hurt ten times more, after all. 

A pair of voices and two sets of footsteps distantly sound from behind you. Your ears tune into them immediately. 

“It’s probably just one of the werewolves, they can’t ever fucking control themselves.” You freeze, steel invading into your veins and your blood thickens into ice. Venom gathers in your mouth and you feel anger cloud your head like a thick fog you can’t clear. 

The words themselves are muttered by a nasal voice. You can tell that whoever spoke them is just rounding the corner by the way the footsteps are becoming closer. 

Murderous thoughts run rampant in your brain, your wolf howling just beneath your skin. 

** Can’t control ourselves. We should slit their throats where they stand!  **

You wrap your hand around your neck, as if that could quell the rising fury in your throat. 

The footsteps are getting much closer now. 

Your eyes widen with panic, and you throw open the nearest door and launch yourself into it, locking it immediately. You shudder in pain as your muscles twinge with stiffness and your bones refuse to form again. You can hear your wolf laughing in the back of your head, a timbre of a voice you no longer recognize. It doesn’t feel right anymore, like you’re fighting against yourself. 

“That’s not fair, Charlie,” the second person says. You stifle a groan at the fire engulfing your foot. “You know it’s the full moon. Besides, we get crazy at the sight of blood all the time. Let them have tonight for God’s sake.” 

“No,” Charlie says, and through the peephole of the door you see a young pair of teens. “_You _ get crazy at the sight of blood. I’m fine.” 

You tilt your head to get a better look at the other vampire, who you recognize as new to the school. She was turned roughly a month or two ago, and was having a rather hard time adjusting. 

“Whatever. Let’s just get back to our room before we’re locked out.” 

The footsteps pass, and you breathe deeply in relief for some reason. Why are you even hiding? They would never suspect anything of you, and you’re not dangerous. You would never truly hurt anyone, right? But the taste of blood remains on your tongue from hours earlier, and you can’t keep down the murderous thoughts drifting in your head long enough for coherence to reach you. 

You should just stop looking for Josie and attempt to make it down to the dungeons before the full moon hits. Yet, between the anger for Alaric and Dorian, between the crimson taste in your mouth and the violent pounding in your entire body, you can’t stray away from Josie and the desire you feel for her. 

You stay panting for several long minutes in the closet, arguing against every single fucking instinct roaming deep down inside your very being. 

It’s not too long before another voice reaches your ears, and you close your eyes in the familiarity and comfort of it as you lean against the wall. You’re tired of being in pain and all you can hear is Josie and her sweet, sweet voice. 

“_No_, Dad, I haven’t seen her.” She sounds exasperated, but you only hear one pair of footsteps so you’re guessing she’s on the phone. “_Yes_, I know what to do if I see her.” 

The sentence gives you pause, and you stop breathing in your confusion. She’s directly near the closet now, just barely closer enough that you can hear Alaric on the other end of the call. 

“Is Lizzie with you? I don’t want you by yourself,” he says, and irritation nips at your heels. Your eyes glimmer gold twice in the dark before dulling completely. 

“I’m meeting up with her now. Besides, Hope isn’t going to hurt anyone. She’s not...dangerous. You should just call off this stupid lockdown before it upsets her even more.” 

The way she talks about you makes you immediately, irrevocably crazy and you have the sudden, intense need to pull her into the closet and sort things out. 

“I’m sorry, Josie, I can’t risk it. She’s not herself right now. You know that.” Your heart quickens at his words, and red-hot resentment makes a demon out of your veins. 

“Yes, I know,” she laughs, but the matter isn’t very funny and her voice sounds harsh to your ears. “I guess...I’ll just call you later.” 

She seems to hang up and you realize this is your chance. She’s just coming across your little hiding place, and if you opened the door at the right time you could get the chance to talk to her. 

You reach for the handle just as the stride of her steps sound the loudest, pulling the door quickly open and reaching out blindly. You find your mark within an instant and tug her in by her hand, closing the door immediately after. 

Josie screams, her other hand coming around to form a fist and hit you squarely in the face. You groan, blood rushing to your forehead as dizziness hits you for less than a second. Josie apologizes the second she sees you. 

“Oh my god,” she breathes, a hand over her chest. “You scared me.” 

You ignore her words. You’re done with small talk. 

“I’ve been looking for you.” 

“Yeah?” She doesn’t meet your eyes, and if she seems nervous your wolf allows you to ignore that, too. She begins to look around the room instead, her pupils dilating in the darkness. She can’t see you well, but you can see her just fine and she looks stunning. She still won’t meet your eyes when she’s done looking, however, and you become very, very irritated. You want her to truly look at you, like you haven’t been able to stop looking at her the entire day. 

“Yes,” you affirm again, your voice almost a growl. This is not you. This is not Hope Mikaelson, the human or the witch. This is Hope Mikaelson, the wolf. 

You reach out, but Josie seems to dodge you. You grow frustrated, knowing you could end this quickly and pull her to you and be done with it, but something holds you back, rooting you to your place. 

She turns her back to you, facing the door of the closet that you had shut the second you had pulled her in. 

“Everyone’s been looking for you, too. Why don’t we go see my dad?” 

She still won’t face you, and the tone of her voice is placating, like she’s trying to calm down a small child throwing a temper tantrum. Your eyes flare golden. 

“No.” 

“Hope, we should go,” she speaks again, her voice a whisper. She sounds scared, and she reaches for the door slowly. Your wolf recoils in anger. How dare she be scared of you? “Before something...happens.” 

“No,” you say once more, before she can take a step forward and leave. She makes no move to open the door again. 

“It’ll be the full moon in a couple of hours,” she says, and you take another step forward. “You’re not yourself right now.” 

  
  
_You’re not yourself right now_.

The words echo in your head, and you hate them because you’ve been hearing them all day. They’re just an excuse, this is the real you, the only difference is that you’re finally taking what you want.

And you’re so close to her now, you know. You could just reach out and skim the skin of her back with your fingers. You could reach out and grab her hips and pull her to you. It would be so easy to just take what you want here and _now_. 

A second goes by, and you can’t stop yourself anymore, can’t keep down the desire nipping at the back of your throat, and a guttural sound of hunger manages to make its way passed the bars of your teeth. 

Your fingers lightly brush over the expanse of her spine, hesitant but sure all the same, and you nearly shut your eyes in relief at the electricity that ignites your entire body all at once. You haven’t touched her in a while, you think. 

She sighs, quiet and low, and maybe your ears barely pick up on it, but you grin with the satisfaction of knowing that she is reacting to you like this at all. Your pupils dilate at the sound, swallowing up the golden glow of your irises until they’re just two small rings. The light in the room diminishes further. Josie stays still in front of you. 

“Do you want me to stop? ” you push on, because you don’t think she does. You don’t want her to, and when she doesn’t reply, a smirk stretches across your lips. You wish you had let your wolf take over sooner. Fingers tingling, you allow them to trail down lower, and the hand by your side twitches with want. 

“H-hope,” she whimpers quietly. The sound of your name on her lips makes you so fucking happy. You bring your other hand up, moving slowly enough that she could stop you at any time. You’re slightly nervous at the knowledge that your wolf might not let her. 

When your hand wraps around a hipbone, your other one traveling down to wrap around the left, she inhales sharply. Her breathing picks up its pace a moment later, and whether or not it’s because she enjoys your touches or hates them you don’t care. You never want to stop. She’s so close now. 

She leans back into you, the straightened set of her shoulders minutes ago now relaxed and almost slouched. 

“Mhmm?” you hum, distracted by the scent of her hair. Vanilla and cinnamon, like always, and you can’t stop yourself from leaning in. Your front is gently pressed up against her back before you know it, and you could touch her cheek with yours if you moved your head just right. 

Your brain short-circuits, the lids of your eyes closing with heavy desire, and the grip you have on her hips tightens. Josie squirms in front of you, and you wonder how quickly you could have her writhing underneath you. Your heart thunders in your chest, and if you could listen to anything else you might have been able to hear the thundering of Josie’s own. 

“_Hope_,” she repeats, more firmly—maybe an attempt to get you to stop—but you can’t resist her anymore. You can practically feel the vibrations of her throat as she talks, and you can’t refrain from pressing your lips to the side of her neck. You do it slowly enough to warn her, but she makes no move to step away from you, and another sigh reaches your ears. 

Her skin is warm and soft beneath your mouth, and you linger for several seconds before moving onto another spot. It would be so easy to mark her again, to persuade her to not forget you like she had done over the entire week. 

“Did you...miss me?” You interrupt yourself with another open-mouthed kiss to the skin just over her pulse point, reveling in the tiny pants that escape her mouth. 

Your voice is impossibly earnest, and you almost want to stab yourself at how desperate you sound, but you forget it a second later, focusing on the expanse of her neck and delighting in the fact that she’s letting you do this. 

You would rather be facing her, but this is just enough to hold back the animal within you and you can’t find it in yourself to care about what direction she’s looking at. 

Her head falls back onto your shoulder, and you long to think that it’s to give you better access to her neck. Your right hand travels from the side of her hip to the front of her stomach, pushing her better against you and you relish in the feeling of her body perfectly against yours. 

She moans particularly loudly when you reach a dip just above her collarbone, her head snapping back up as her ass accidentally grinds back into the crotch of your pants.

Warmth shoots directly to your abdomen, and you close your heavy eyes for half a second, a grunt escaping your lips before you can stop yourself. The heat stays like a hot fire in your belly despite the stilling of her hips, and it’s suddenly so, so fucking hard to keep your eyes open. You force your left hand to reach up to tug at her hair and move her head back to where it was on your shoulder before. You’re not done with marking her as yours, but you think that even if you had all the time in the world it might not be enough. 

Your lips part, your canines elongating. You see her skin beneath a golden filter, and she’s so fucking beautiful. You almost smile, your teeth just barely scraping against her pulse point, and you prepare yourself to bite down. 

A slight prickle hits at your elbow, and stunned, you release her gently, your hands hesitantly removing themselves from her body before you can blink twice. You stumble back a few steps, nausea hitting you all at once and a hand snaps to cover the small spot of blood on your elbow. 

You look up in confusion, and in the light of your own eyes you can see the faint glimmer of a tranquilizer dart in Josie’s left hand. Her other hand is clamped over her mouth, and when the light in the room shines just right, you can see tears in her eyes. 

You pass out moments later, your eyes too tired to look into hers for any longer. You think maybe that’s a good thing. 

_ Did she just fucking tranquilize me?  _


	15. Chapter 15

_ You wake up in utter agony, the floor cold and bruising underneath your too sensitive skin. You’re sweating, your clothes sticking to your skin uncomfortably, and there’s a pain in your side when you breathe too deeply.  _

_ You’re in the dungeons, that’s for sure. There’s metal bars across from you, and the air is cool and stagnant.  _

_ You can’t tell what time it is. It’s dark, but there’s a single glow of light coming from somewhere far away. When you look again, it’s gone. A squelching sound signals in your ears and draws your attention.  _

_ There’s a white wolf across from you that you never noticed before. Its not facing you at first,only hovering over something on the ground. But in the next second its golden eyes are glowing in your direction. When you can get your own eyes to focus, you see something dripping from its mouth. It’s blood. When you look down the entire floor is flooded with it. The wolf growls at you, but the sound reaches your ears as laughter.  _

_It takes a step forward, but you don’t feel any fear. The wolf is so familiar, but you can’t place_ _it. It steps forward once again, shifting to the right, and then you notice the body it was hovering over previously. _

_Panic settles deep within your bones, and you move your eyes dreadfully, slowly, across the body. You see brunette hair and scream, but_ _nothing comes out of your mouth. It’s Josie, her neck tilted a weird way and her throat slit from left to right like a fucking rag doll. You jump towards her, but there are no human hands in front of you. When you look down you see white paws. _

_ You realize you were the wolf. You killed her. You killed her. You killed her— _

Vanilla assaults your senses almost immediately as you wake up. You don’t yet have the energy to open your eyes, and you lay still on a soft surface, trying to adjust to your surroundings. You’re pretty sure there’s a pillow underneath your head, and you’re almost hesitant to actually sit up and wake up. 

It smells almost heavenly, and you can’t stop yourself from inhaling deeply as you force more air into your nose. You feel like you can’t breathe. Although the smell is comforting you, it has no effect to soothe the nightmare you just woke up from. Vanilla reminds you of Josie, but the nightmare has tainted that, and now all you smell is crimson blood.

You need to wake up and get out. Yet you can’t help your mind from swimming relentlessly around the dream, but with every terrible thought you get lost underneath the wave and drown over and over again. 

You have no sense of time, but the warm reds and yellows against your eyelids tell you that wherever you are, the light is on. 

Voices reach your ears a second later. 

“...I know you always want to see the good in people, but she’s dangerous right now. It’s hard to hear, but Dorian swears this is all necessary. His research suggests that the effects of the potion are far worse than we first thought.” 

It’s Alaric, almost too familiar, and tension causes your body to become paralyzed. He’s close to you, maybe only a couple of feet away, and anger sets in between the vertebrate of your spinal cord.

“And please enlighten me on why she’s in your bed and not in the werewolf transformation space, like we agreed.” His tone is entirely ironic. 

“I forgot where they are?” 

The second voice is almost enough to calm you down, but not entirely and the impulse to move appears again. It would be best if you played asleep right now; it would be easier to escape, easier to breathe without the both of them in the room. 

It’s not difficult to guess who they’re talking about, and a second later you become aware that you’re most likely in Josie’s bed.

Your heart shakes and you make a quiet sound at the back of your throat. 

“Josie, you helped spell the locks on them.” 

The man scoffs, his voice disbelieving, and you wonder why Josie is lying. 

“Well, dead weight is hard to carry and this was the closest place I could get her to.” 

That part is at least true. You had gotten pretty close to the dorms while you were looking for Josie. At least, that’s what you remember. The rest of it is unclear. You have mostly no memory of what happened before you fell asleep—you just know that you need to get out of here. 

“You didn’t think to siphon magic to levitate her?” 

“I...it doesn’t matter. She’s here now. Have you called MG yet?” She sounds upset. 

“Yeah, he told me he’s coming with Lizzie right now to help transport her. I added something in the sedative to stabilize her emotions, so she should—“

You make the unfortunate mistake of stretching your arms, but your wrists stay in place and you quickly realize that your arms are confined. You pull at them again in panic, but the sound alerts Josie and Alaric. 

“She’s awake,” he says, and your eyes snap open finally. You realize that the reason you couldn’t move your arms is because your hands are cuffed to the bed with two manacles and a chain. 

“I thought you said that the dart would last until the full moon? It’s been thirty minutes,” Josie whispers to him as if you won’t be able to hear, and then they both turn towards you. 

They don’t immediately speak, and you take the time to clear your throat and talk first. 

“Does someone want to tell me why I’m restrained?” You tug at the chains again to emphasize your point. You’re not an animal. You feel fine now. You feel in control. You just need to get out of this damn room. 

“Just a _precaution_,” Alaric says, almost pacifying, but his eyes shift nervously. Maybe you came on too strong, because now he thinks you’re crazy mad again. You’re a little angry, but it’s mostly diffused now, and you won’t let yourself show what’s left. Your last memory was him calling a lockdown on you. 

“No, Dad. She’s right. It’s silly,” Josie defends you, and you almost smirk right at her father, but you decide not to. He has the power right now, and you can’t leave until you can distract him or Josie. You need to get out—that’s the only instinct driving in your mind right now. 

Josie makes a move to get closer to you and you wonder why she’s even in the room. She had been avoiding you in the morning, and the last time you saw her she was running away from you. But you can’t let her distract you now. You need to find a way out of this room first—that’s your priority. You know your fate if you don’t. You’ll be trapped in the dungeons during the entire full moon. 

“I’m gonna unlock these now, okay?” Like her father, she’s also placating, like she’s trying to calm down a hostile animal. You’re confused—you haven’t done anything to suggest you are the entire day. She hesitates as she steps forward, and you watch her with curious eyes as she looks at you back. God, you think you could stare at her eyes all day. But whatever she sees in your own, it must do _something_ because she steps forward again. 

Your body is too hot, and when she sits down next to you on the bed you want to shift closer to her but you’re afraid you’ll scare her. So you stay frozen, only watching her every movement. You know you must look crazy, but she’s looking at you with something you can’t name, and it makes you want to pull her down on top of you. The mattress sinks slightly as she sits, and she moves slowly to grab for your right hand. Her touch is soothing where it brushes against your wrist, but you can tell she’s trying not to touch you all that much. Her fingers are too deliberate, purposely skimming only the manacle. 

Time feels like it has slowed, but she unlocks the chain rather quickly and drops her hand, reaching for your other one. You still as she sits up slightly to hover over your body to grab at the other manacle. She smells so good, and it makes you want to lean in but that’d be creepy so you manage to say still. But you know—deep inside—the only reason she’s being so soft and nice to you is because she feels bad for you. You can tell she absolutely pities you. 

She had left you at the field even as you almost begged her to stay. But now she is here, and you almost hate it—how hot and cold she is all at once, how quickly she changes her mind. And even as she had made you feel like shit, you had still sought her out. Insanity flares behind your eyes as you think about it. You clamp down on it but the barest hints make it passed your lips. 

“So _now_ you can look at me,” you bite out, your lips turning up into a sneer even as you try to shut them together. You can’t. “You’ve been avoiding me the entire week.” 

She doesn’t even respond, only glancing at you like you haven’t spoken at all. It only serves to infuriate you further.

“For fuck’s sake, you haven’t spoken a single word to me since the morning.” You’re being too rude, almost snarling at her, but you can’t stop the words from tumbling out like water from a broken dam. Your teeth clench with the effort. You glance at Alaric, who is staring at you from the other side of the room. You’ve been quiet enough that you don’t think he’s heard any of it. “And even then, all you had to say was _nothing_.” 

“W-what?” she trips on her words, and she’s confused but you don’t see it immediately. The hair around her shoulders shift as she turns to you more firmly, her hand wrapping around your wrist. You know it’s an accident, but you allow your eyes to shut momentarily like she did it on purpose. Like she wants to touch you.

Maybe you’re hot and cold, too. 

You force your eyes to stay open, but they catch on the side of her neck exposed when she turned to face you completely, and you see red and purple bruises. Hickies. Jealousy consumes you entirely, and you get the sudden urge to kill Penelope Park. Gold leaks into your vision. 

“You couldn’t even wait,” you scoff, not even bothering to hide the way your eyes trail the love bites. “I bet you didn’t think twice before jumping into bed with her the next day.” 

You sound crazy, your voice above the loudest whisper you can manage, but you can’t stop all the same. 

Josie makes a sound of surprise and then follows the line of your sight, her chin dipping to her collarbone before she realizes what you’re talking about. She clamps a hand over her neck, glancing back at Alaric who’s texting on his phone, and then her eyes flash angrily as she looks at you with disappointment.

She pushes against your shoulders furiously to stand up, but you’re so fucking touch-deprived that you lean into the small press of her hands. 

“Are you talking about Penelope?” Her eyes narrow, and you get the miserable feeling that you’ve done something wrong. You’ve fucked up, but you don’t completely understand how yet. Her voice is a lot louder than yours, and Alaric nearby pipes up. 

“She broke up with me at the game,” she whisper-yells, and there’s tears in her eyes. Your heart pounds and you feel heavy dread sit in your stomach. 

“And this?” She moves her hair again, gesturing to the bruises on her neck. You’re so glad Alaric is standing behind her. “_You_ did this. _You_!” 

It doesn’t make sense. You haven’t laid a hand on her for a week, and bruises don’t last that long. The last time you looked they had been covered up, but even then, that was still a week ago. 

She gets up off the bed finally and leaves the room, which is stupid because this is her room and you should be the one leaving. You’re so fucking confused. And Josie hadn’t bothered to fully release you from the chain before she left, so you’re stuck watching her leave helplessly. You have half the mind to tear the chain off the bed yourself, but you know that wouldn’t bode well with Alaric. Alaric—who you can’t even look in the eye as he gazes at you, searching for an explanation. 

MG comes through the open doorway a second later. 

“Hey, Hope. Dr. Saltzman.” He’s the perfect picture of obliviousness. “What’s up?” 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since y’all wanted a josie pov so much :)

You can’t believe her. How could she accuse you of not caring, of screwing around with Penelope? All you’ve done is care, God, you’ve been _killing_ yourself over Hope, you can barely—

“Hey, Jo!” 

You storm passed MG’s clueless, curious gaze, bumping directly into Lizzie, who’s right behind him. You try to act like you were never there, but she pulls you aside before you can even attempt to pretend. You blink back your tears but she’s already seen them. Why are you so damn sensitive about everything? 

“Josie! What happened?” she whisper-yells, pulling you to a sudden stop, placing a thoughtful hand on your forearm. You don’t know where to start. How do you explain everything that’s happened in the past couple of hours? How can you explain the way your lungs feel like they’re collapsing? How can you even _begin_ to describe the rapid beat of your heart, the tingling just beneath your skin in all the places Hope’s touched you? It’s so wrong, but you can’t stop your thoughts from lingering, can’t stop your traitorous body, can’t stop—

“Oh my God. Are those hickies?” Lizzie nearly screams, and you can’t believe you had forgotten to cover them up. You place a hand casually against the wall behind you, siphoning magic and performing a glamour spell to erase the marks on your neck. 

“No,” you deny too quickly, and Lizzie narrows her eyes at you. “Okay, yes. But let me explain—“ 

“I can’t believe you,” Lizzie cuts her off. “It’s only been a couple of hours since she dumped you. I thought we agreed, dear sister of mine, that you wouldn’t go crawling back to Satan the second she waved her skirt at you.” 

“Gross, Lizzie,” you make a face, and Lizzie rolls her eyes. The familiarity of it is a welcome distraction, and you allow yourself to forget all about Hope Mikaelson. 

“You’re such a prude, Jo,” she says, wrinkling her nose before smirking almost proudly at your—now unblemished—neck. You blush red. “Actually, maybe not.” 

You wonder if she would look so proud if she knew exactly who gave you the marks. You’ve talked to her vaguely about Hope and the situation before, but not enough for her to know the entire extent of it. You only told her that the tribrid had been losing control, and other than that she’s completely oblivious. The only people that know the true details are Alaric, Mr. Williams, and you. 

“Anyways, we’ll talk about _this_ later,” Lizzie points at you in a precise way. “Dad summoned me for whatever reason. I guess Hope’s having wolfy problems again. Ugh.” 

You tell her goodbye and she leaves you standing there. You actually had no direction or area that you had planned to go when you stormed out of the room, so now you feel kind of lost. You’re too embarrassed to go back, though, so you decide to just hang out in the kitchen, sipping on various cold drinks, trying to cool off. 

You’re too hot, and your skin feels like it’s been rubbed raw in a terribly uncomfortable way. Your mind is clouded with thoughts of the last hour, unable to escape the feeling of Hope’s hands and mouth. It stays in your head like a heavy fog, and you find you can’t think straight. It’s funny how you haven’t been able to stop thinking about her, you think. And then there was Hope—who was acting like she couldn’t remember what happened, when all you wanted was to forget. 

But did you really want to forget? It seems so easy to wish so, but you can’t help memorizing the feeling of her lips against yours, can’t help remembering the possessiveness of her hands against her skin. Like you were _hers_. You shake your head, as if that could dispel the thoughts running rampant in your mind. 

After about thirty minutes, your father calls you to meet him in his office with Mr. Williams. When you open the double doors, it appears as though the two have been arguing. They both quiet when they see you. 

“Hey, Josie,” your dad greets you, setting a book on his desk faced-open. You recognize it as the one you had seen Hope carrying in the library. Its flittering gold catches your eye, and you can’t look away for a long moment. Your teacher says hello as well, and they both get right to it. 

“MG and Lizzie were able to transport Hope down to the werewolf transformation spaces, but they don’t know a lot about her _real_ predicament. They think it’s just a weird full-moon thing,” your dad tells you. Mr. Williams nods in agreement. 

“Speaking of, we only have two hours until the full moon effectively begins. Now, we can’t predict what will happen, but by combining Marion’s and Fentere’s works, we know it can’t be very good. The potion appeals to one’s supernatural side, in this case Hope’s wolf, and it brings those parts out in the extreme,” the teacher says, his hands brushing against each other in an anxious way you’ve never really seen. 

“Do you—“ You take a deep breath. This doesn’t seem real. “Do you think she’ll actually...?” 

_ Do you think she’ll actually hurt anyone?  _

“No,” Alaric answers quickly, but the look he shares with Mr. Williams says otherwise. “But just in case, we’ll be checking up on her throughout the night. We thought it’d be best if we took shifts to look after her until she starts changing. The two of us will trade off every thirty minutes, and Dorian and I will spend the time in between trying to figure out an antidote providing something goes wrong.” 

“How close are you to developing one?” you ask, resisting the urge to tap your foot against the hardwood. You don’t mean to be so impatient and miserable, but you’re irritated at the way they’re treating Hope—like she’s a monster. Another part of you hates how easily you defend her when she’s done nothing but treat you like crap. 

“Close. I’ve been adjusting the normal cure for desiderio potum to fit Fentere’s remedies. All of his were temporary, though, and he never came up with any permanent or concrete solutions,” Mr. Williams answers. “We just need time.” 

Your eyes glance to the waxing moon outside the window, a glowing yellow-white color. You know they don’t have very much time. 

“Why don’t I just stay with Hope until the full moon?” you ask, ignoring the pounding of your heart at the prospect of spending time with her. “It would give you guys more time to work together and find a fix, and—“ 

“Absolutely not,” Alaric cuts her off. “It’s too dangerous to spend that much time alone with her at once. You didn’t see her a couple of minutes ago, she was—“

“Dad, please,” you try to argue, walking around his desk to plead with him. You wonder what happened a couple of minutes ago. “I’m the only one out of the three of us with any supernatural powers. If anything happens, I can defend myself.” 

Your father splutters angrily, but he shuts his mouth when Mr. Williams agrees with you. 

“She’s right, Ric,” he tells him. “It’ll give us more time to find a better solution, and she’s the most qualified to deal with a werewolf. You and I don’t have magic or super strength.” 

You suddenly like Mr. Williams a lot better. 

“Yeah, and I can just text you every couple of minutes or something to keep you updated,” you add, knowing that your dad will have to relent. 

“Fine,” he says finally. “But I’ll be expecting a call every ten minutes or I’ll assume the worst. And Josie, don’t even _think_ about letting her out.” 

You smile shyly in triumph, your head already spinning knowing that you’ll see Hope soon. It’s definitely not a good idea, but Mr. Williams and your dad don’t know that. They don’t know what Hope’s been doing to you. They don’t know that a terrible part of you craves it.

As you lose yourself in your thoughts, your fingers drum against the wood of the desk you’re standing in front of. 

And now that you’re closer to the desk, the gold of Fentere’s book captures your attention again. Mr. Williams and your dad are talking to each other but you can’t hear a single thing, suddenly entranced in the words on the page left open. 

** Out of the twenty vampires I studied, almost all of them turned their humanity off. They could not suffer the agony of delusion and despair any longer, but it was this switch that caused many of them to lose their minds. They had previously remained strong for their loved ones, and by severing that connection, they only became weaker.  **

**Out of the ten werewolves I studied, about** **half of their characters completely devolved. Their minds became fissured, split between their wolf and the human part of them. It was at this point that I knew I had lost them to desiderio potum. **

** I still remember the night Jane came to me, as for once I did not recognize her. Her eyes were that brilliant gold, and her voice was rough and confident in places it hadn’t been before. I confess it took me a while to realize that I was not talking to her, but her wolf. Her wolf had entirely consumed her, and what was left of her was trapped in her head. She died many weeks later, but she had been absent a long time before then. I admit, my mourning for her had not started with her death.  **

** And, though I did not realize it at the time, looking back, I think, her eyes were screaming. The gold was a mask, and if I knew then what I knew now, I might have been able to get through to her and slip it off.  **

** For now, I will say she was far too gone, but later, when I can allow the guilt to plague me, I will realize that I could have done more. My time on this forsaken planet has taught me that you can always do more. **

“Josie? You okay?” Your dad’s voice snaps you out of reading any longer, and you nod quickly. 

“I’m gonna go now,” you say, and if Mr. Williams and him look suspiciously at you, you pretend not to notice. You wish them good luck and head for the kitchens. You don’t know if Hope’s eaten at all today, and some food would be a good start to a conversation. 

The both of you desperately need to talk, but you know you need to remember what’s important. You can’t allow yourself to make a repeat of last time. If she wants to pretend it didn’t happen, you can do the same. 

You grab a couple of snacks and a glass of water from the kitchen, putting everything on a tray before going downstairs to the dungeons. 

It’s silent when you step into the dark space, only a couple of lights hanging from the ceiling. You don’t hear anything as you come down the stairs. 

_Pretend nothing happened_, you remind yourself. 

You find her in the left holding cell, sitting on the corner of her bed. She doesn’t immediately look up, but you know that she’s sensed your presence already. You decide to place the tray on a nearby table, wondering if you should speak first. 

_ Pretend nothing happened.  _

“I brought food. You must be hungry,” you say quietly, your voice a whisper, your tone clipped. You don’t know if it’s safe enough to unlock the cell door—your dad told you not to—so you wait for a response instead.

“Yes,” she says, her voice slight husky in the way that makes your hands shake. Her eyes smolder as she looks at you intensely. They’re so dark you can’t tell pupil from iris. “I’m _starving_.” 

You levitate the tray through the bars of the cell with a wave of your hand, but she doesn’t touch the food and only continues to stare at you. You wonder if she was even talking about food in the first place.

“I...I should apologize,” she says after a long while. She stands up then, but doesn’t come any closer. Her voice is thick with emotion, but she remains calm. It somehow bothers you, how nothing ever really shakes her, how little she shows it when something does. “I didn’t mean to harm you.” 

_ What did you mean, then?  _

“It’s okay,” you lie, wanting to stay calm as well and avoid the subject. You think that if you talked about it any longer you might start crying again. You freeze as Hope steps closer, her fingers almost touching the cell bars. She shakes her head as if she knows it’s definitely not okay. 

“Do they, uh, hurt?” Your eyes snap up, confused, and then you see Hope’s eyes are trained on your neck. There’s nothing there, but it’s obvious what she’s talking about now. It looks like she’s no longer pretending nothing happened, or at least, she’s acknowledging what made you blow up half an hour ago. 

“No,” you say before you can think about it. Do the marks hurt? No. They _burn_, when you skim your fingers against them. They _ache_, when you stretch your neck. Do they _hurt_? No, not exactly. 

“That’s good.” Hope nods awkwardly. God, everything is so awkward. You wish you could just talk freely, but so much stands between the two of you. 

“Yeah,” you agree, but a part of you wishes that the hickies would hurt. You wish it would pain you so badly that you wouldn’t want Hope as much as you do, you wish it would cause you such awful discomfort that you would hate the other girl. 

“You should eat,” you add, when you can’t take the silence anymore. Hope nods, tilting it curiously, like she’s _really_ looking at you for the first time. 

“Join me?” she asks, and you know there’s no way in hell that’s happening. 

“I don’t think so,” you almost laugh at the request, and something you can’t completely discern glints in her eye. She’s obviously just looking for a way out of here. You know werewolves don’t like to be caged in on the full moon, and you hate that she’s in this position, but you have to believe your dad when he says it’s necessary. 

She sits back down on her bed, completely ignoring the food and you imagine that she was never starving to begin with. Not long after she’s sat down, a sick crunching sound fills the room. 

“Ah—“ she yelps quietly, cutting herself off with a hand clamped across her mouth. She lurches forward with the next sound—a disturbing jarring one that has you cringing. “Fuck.” 

“Hope!” you nearly scream, already rushing to open the door and run to her side before you can think clearly about it. 

“Don’t come closer,” she stops you, two hands out in front of her. You catch a glimpse of sharp white teeth. Something must be bad if she’s not thinking about leaving anymore. But what’s changed? You choke on your words, and she notices. “It’s fine, Josie.”

She says your name so incredibly softly that you nearly melt into a puddle on the floor. 

“I-I don’t understand,” you tell her, your voice heavy with panic. “It isn’t the full moon yet.” 

“I _know_,” Hope says, almost so bitterly that it surprises you, and she clenches her fists as pain seems to strike her again. The sound of bones breaking is too much to handle. Why did you think this was a good idea? 

“You should go,” Hope bites out, her head down. You can’t see the look on her face as her fingers snap in weird angles in front of you. You feel like throwing up. 

“N-no, I...” You need to think. You need to be better. You need to do more. “Let me try and heal you.” 

“You can’t,” she tells you, and you know that. Of course, you know that. You should know that, at least. You’re so stupid. You know that you can’t heal a changing wolf, yet you offered anyway—because watching her suffer in front of you is making you sick to your stomach. 

“I can at least try to dull the pain,” you tell her, and then you’ve made up your mind. You siphon magic from the bars, and the lock clicks open and the door swings away. 

“Stop,” she says, and if her eyes flash yellow, you don’t mention it. She’s bent over now, a hand pulling at her stomach like there’s a monster inside of it. She no longer cares about escaping or leaving the cell. You extend your arm, siphoning the small amount of magic in the bed, too scared to actually touch her, too scared to harm her. “I don’t want to hurt you.” 

From a distance, you attempt to try and relieve her pain, but it’s not enough. Your lips press themselves into a thin pout, irritated that your magic is not enough. You’re _never_ enough. 

Hope continues to endure the utter torment, yet she only pants and whimpers lowly. She doesn’t scream or yell, and you wonder if she’s only holding back for you, or if she’s so used to the pain that she knows how to deal with it. 

Her head snaps back suddenly, her nails stretching into claws. Your eyes widen, but you don’t feel scared. There’s still an hour and a half until the full moon—this should not be happening. 

“Josie, leave,” she turns away from you, and you imagine that her nerves must be on fire. You decide to finally get close to her because your magic isn’t working from afar. You’ll be able to help more if you can directly touch where it hurts the most. “_Please_.” 

You struggle against her as she resists your help, and then finally you get in a better position to heal her. You only take a second to think about how you’re nearly in her lap. She feels too warm against you, and desire boils hot beneath your skin. 

You place a hand on her shoulder to siphon magic, and then wave your other one over blotted parts of skin and vanishing bruises. 

“You’re so sweet, you know,” she groans out, and you ignore it, waving your hand across her broken fingers again and again to ease the agony. Hope trembles for a long moment, before it appears that all pain has seized. 

“_Yes_. So sweet for us.” You’re so consumed by the fire burning a pit of worry in your stomach that the words almost don’t immediately register in your head. 

_Us_? 

You lean away by pushing softly on her shoulders, meeting eyes that flicker between yellow and blue. There’s a smirk dancing across her lips, her pupils almost slitted like an animal’s, and everything about her is so uncharacteristically not her that you softly gasp. “What do you mean ‘us’?”

You think about the words you had read from Fentere’s book. Is she...?

“Hope?” You shake her shoulders, but she doesn’t snap out of it. She only watches you carefully, her fingers slowly skimming your skin. You had almost forgotten that you were planted halfway across her lap. 

“You’re not Hope,” you say, the realization hitting you full force in a way that leaves you breathless. She smiles more widely, white fangs and canines stretching outside her mouth. You try to get up off her lap but her fingers only tighten, somehow having found their way around your hips. 

Hope—or not Hope—smiles dangerously, her eyes completely golden now. You can’t see a trace of blue. 

“Well...yes and no,” she drawls, the hands on your hips wandering further. They pull you up slightly, the sudden show of strength making your breath come out heavier than usual. You don’t think it’s happening on purpose, but you can’t help the small yelp when her fingers settle on your ass. Her nose finds purchase at your neck and she inhales deeply. “_Mhmm_. See, _Hope_ was starting to get quite...indecisive, and I could not allow such weakness. You must understand.” 

You shake your head, tears pooling hotly in your eyes. You try to stand but she won’t let you once again. How could you have been so stupid? How could you have fallen for this? 

“But don’t worry, she _wanted_ me to take over,” she says, her voice like lava in your ear. She’s too close to you, and you can’t back away because she won’t let you. You’re stuck, unless you can siphon magic off of her and just knock her out. But you can’t bring yourself to. “The truth is...our _beloved_ Hope could be here right now if she wanted to. I am only a part of her, after all. She could take back the reigns at any time, yet it seems she’s happiest when I’m in charge. I allow her to do whatever she wants. Is it any wonder that she only ‘loses’ control when she’s around _you_?” 

You blink rapidly, trying not to let any tears fall, but one slips unbidden and hits the fabric of your shirt. Blue glints in Hope’s eyes as she watches the action, but in the next second, any remnants of the color is gone. 

“That’s only because of the potion,” you say, your voice heavy with denial. You try to stand up again, but fingers tug you down once more. You need to get away, but a reason why escapes you. Why can’t you stay here? “She can’t stop herself. _Please_, Hope, I know you’re in there.” 

Hope—not Hope, you remind yourself again—laughs harshly, before cutting herself off in anger.

“The idiotic potion hasn’t changed anything at all,” she grits out, before unclenching her teeth, visibly forcing herself to calm down. “You know...she’s always longed for you, has always wanted _you_. We don’t do anything but think about _you_. It’s always, ‘is Josie okay?’ Or ‘what’s Josie doing?’ Always trying to please _you_, always trying to make _you_ happy.” 

It’s getting harder to remind yourself that this isn’t real. You can’t help it, though, your feelings hurt much too easily. And Hope’s voice was so low and guttural that you find yourself holding back a whimper. Why can’t you control yourself? 

“Believe me when I say again that _nothing_ has changed. The only difference between a month ago and now is that she’s finally taking what she wants. And she wants you.” Her teeth scrape the skin above your collarbone just barely, like an accident. You try not to shudder underneath her soft lips, try not to give into the pleasure of pointed teeth. “She craves you, _incessantly_, every single moment of every single night and day, but you do nothing but deny us. She spends all this time pining over you, just for you to dismiss us at the earliest chance. How could you _dare_ to reject us?”

“But, I know you like our kisses. Our touches.” She mouths at your neck, just lightly enough that it feels like the mere breeze of a soft wind.“You can’t help it, how your body reacts to us. How you pant and moan like a desperate little tease—“ 

Fingers grip tighter but not painfully, and you find yourself forgetting why you need to get away. Hope leans up to whisper in your ear. 

“—leaving us hot and bothered time and time _again_. I mean, if anything, the potion has only made things easy, and deep down, Hope knows it was the _greatest_ thing to ever happen to us. She doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process, as long as she gets you. Believe me, as much as I hate it, she has her heart set on you, and we will stop at nothing to have you.”

The mouth that had strayed to your ear draws back, and suddenly lips suck against the skin of your neck. Hard. You instantly cry out, your eyes rolling into the back of your head without your permission. 

You almost lose yourself to the sensation, your body betraying every thought in your head, but you manage to gain control and you tear yourself away, finally breaking free. You regret it immediately when a growl answers your actions, teeth moving the clothing over your shoulder and latching onto the skin it finds. 

The overwhelming sound of a phone ringing distracts Hope enough for her to release you, and you take the time to clear your head and siphon her energy out of her. 

She leans away from you as she becomes dizzy, her eyes flashing between gold and blue, lids blinking repeatedly, before she collapses and stays unmoving on her bed. 

You scramble for your phone, managing to pick it up on the last ring. 

“Hey,” your dad says casually. You can barely hear him over the harsh pounding of your heart in your ears. “How’s it going?” 

You look around the holding cell, from the food left untouched to Hope’s limp body. You should tell him to come get you, you should tell him that you’ve decided you can’t handle this, after all. 

“Great,” you say, instead. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really thought a lot over this chapter. i hope you guys don’t think it’s as bad as i thought it was!


	17. Chapter 17

It’s easier to have her like this, than not at all. 

That’s what you tell yourself when you wake up after Josie put you to sleep. It’s what you keep telling yourself when you remember everything that has just happened, or maybe it happened a long time ago, you have no idea how much time has passed. 

You have no idea how much time has passed since your wolf took over.

You see everything in two ways now. In one, your wolf is only allowing you to have everything you’ve ever wanted. You can touch Josie because she’s _yours_, you can kiss her because she belongs to _you_. You are the most powerful being in this school, and this is your birthright. She loves you back, in this version. 

In the other way, you are trapped within your mind, watching hands that are not your hands touch Josie who is yours but not yours. You see everything through golden eyes—eyes that look like yours but aren’t, eyes that devour, eyes that devastate. You speak filthy words that are ruthlessly cruel, unapologetically honest, and the screaming in your head does nothing to convince your wolf that they are not true. 

You watch as your wolf does things that you’ve wanted to do for a very long time now.She kisses Josie remorselessly, when you can’t do it without apologizing a second later. She tells Josie that you want her, that you love her, when you can only ever say _nothing_. Your wolf gives you strength—gives you _everything_.

Yet, it’s not exactly what you’ve always wanted. Where you want to press your lips softly, your wolf just shoves her tongue down Josie’s throat. Where you want to lightly skim your fingers against skin, your wolf wants to bite and hurt. 

She and you are different in that aspect, but essentially one and the same. 

You can’t exactly remember the moment you gave up. Was it before Josie showed up, or somewhere in between? You don’t know, but every couple of seconds flashes of memories and skin strike against the darkness of your closed eyes.

You only really remember wanting this to end, and your wolf had offered an out, had offered help in such a tantalizing way you could not find it in yourself to resist. After realizing what pain and torture you had put Josie through, you could not withstand it any longer. Although you can’t fully remember what happened, by the look of the bruises on her neck, it wasn’t anything good. Turning everything over to your wolf helped ease the ache that the guilt gave you. 

And because your wolf is in control, you can now shift at any moment, without any pain at all, and that thought relieves the weight almost suffocating you. It had been so excruciating earlier, watching your bones break only to reform and then break again. With your wolf in control, none of that has to happen. 

Your wolf—

It just makes things easier—easier to breathe, easier to not take the blame. Your wolf is a monster...you, you are human. 

It’s just—easier. 

_ It’s easier to have her like this, than not at all.  _

Something gently scrapes against concrete and then you’re sitting up on your bed. But when your hands grip thin sheets they’re not yours. When the points of your ears become sharper, your hearing keen, it’s not you that smiles with the acknowledgement of power. 

“Hope—“ 

Josie’s voice stops abruptly, and you watch her through a set of stone bars and a golden haze. She looks absolutely perfect for you. 

Your wolf fixes a predatory gaze on her, and you catch the exact time Josie is able to see the moment you end and your wolf begins. You can’t exactly interpret the look on her face, but your wolf tells you that she’s yours. 

And you want to be in control of your movements, but there’s a soothing voice at the back of your head telling you that it’s better this way. In this reality, Josie wants your wolf, not you. She doesn’t like talking to Hope Mikaelson, she doesn’t like kissing Hope Mikaelson. She likes your wolf, she responds to your wolf, lets your wolf touch her, kisses your wolf _only_. 

“What did you do to her?” She sounds angry, and you want to comfort her, you want to apologize a million times over, but it must be better this way, right? She’s only pretending—you know deep down that she’s happy you’re not truly here for this conversation. 

“Nothing she didn’t let me,” you say casually, but it’s not you. You’re more confident than you’ve ever been, and damn, you hate it, but this is for the best. You need to be strong for her, and weak, little human-witch you just isn’t enough. 

“Where is she?” Your wolf positively bristles at that, and you can’t control the spike of anger at the bite of Josie’s tone. It ignites in your chest, catching fire with every breath. 

“Oh,” a lazy drawl escapes your lips, no matter how hard you clench your teeth. You can’t stop _fucking_ talking. “Now you want her?” 

“Wha—what?” 

“I mean, it’s not like you really did before.” You have no control, only the barest in your fingertips if you concentrate hard enough, only enough to twitch your hands really. How is it that you can hear laughing in the back of your head? “She’s been trying to talk to you all week. It’s humiliating—how _desperate_ she is, for you. Yet, you recoil over even the slightest touch. You can’t _imagine_ how _angry_ I was when you left us all alone at the game—in front of everyone, too.” 

You need to calm down, but it’s not you anymore. Your wolf can do anything, and all you can do is watch through the windows of your eyes. 

“I d-do want her,” Josie says, like she’s picking her words very carefully, but it’s not convincing. She wants you as a friend, maybe. She wants who you are as your wolf, maybe. But not you, never you. Does it matter, though? You’ll love her any way she’ll allow. 

“Prove it,” a voice like smoke gathers beneath your teeth, your tone too husky, and Josie shuts her eyes for a second too long. You’re nearly growling at her. “Open the door. Show us how much you _really_ care. No distractions, no interruptions, you can even put your phone away.” 

You eye the phone gripped tightly in Josie’s hand. That damn phone. You had almost gotten what you wanted, and then it had to ring and ruin everything. God, has Josie always smelled like this? This..._good_? This enticing and tempting, like if she doesn’t come closer soon you won’t know what to do with yourself? 

“N-no,” Josie glances away, turning her back on you. You disgust her. She can’t even look at you...and it _hurts_. “I can’t.” 

“Fine.” You suddenly want to hurt her, make her feel the way she makes you feel. Does she understand the way her voice scrapes your ribs raw? Can she see the way you can barely breathe? You want to—no, you don’t. You would never want to hurt her. Why are you thinking like this? “Can I at least have my own phone, then?” 

You don’t know where your wolf is going with this. It’s not exactly like there’s anything to do with a phone right now, but you don’t care. All you know is that your wolf has your back, and you just need to listen and go with it. 

Josie thinks for a long moment before narrowing her eyes. She grabs one of the bars in front of her to siphon magic off of, and her hand glows red as she whispers a summoning incantation. In the next second, a blur you recognize as your phone comes floating down the stairs and into Josie’sopen hand. Your lips stretch into a smirk, and you stand up before she can float the phone through the door. 

_ You can’t control yourself.  _

You meet her at the bars, and she takes a step back as if she knows exactly what you’re up to. You want to back away, too, retreat back to the bed, do anything else, but your wolf is saying that you need to be close to her right now. 

You want her to touch you. 

She looks at you with a weird expression on her face before silently handing you your phone, and the quietude in the room would be constricting if you couldn’t hear your vicious, wanton heart beating loudly in your ears.

_ You can’t control anything.  _

Your wolf gives you the reckless courage to slip your hand between the bars, and it’s your wolf that wraps itching fingers around the phone, and it’s still your wolf when you purposely drift north to glide over the soft skin of Josie’s palm. 

She gasps with the barest amount of sound, but it’s just enough to directly reach your ears. She furrows her eyebrows and then quickly pulls away, shaking her head. The sinister part of you allows that same annoying smirk to slide across your lips, that same irritating chuckle to cross your mouth. 

You watch as a thumb you don’t recognize scrolls through all of your notifications. There’s about fifty calls from Alaric you never answered, and some texts from an unknown number you think is Emma. Your heart drops as your finger hovers over the text. In the next moment, you’re tapping her number and calling her, the phone to your ear. 

“What are you doing?” Josie asks, alarmed, but she doesn’t come any nearer. 

_ What are you doing?  _

“Calling Emma,” your wolf answers, to the both of you. 

“The girl from Mystic Falls?” Josie’s face scrunches up, and she pretends to be confused. You know the siphoner knows exactly who she is, and the hurt in her eyes pains and heals you all at once. You realize you want her to be jealous. You want her to show you that she _loves_ you, that she _likes_ you, that she _thinks_ about you even remotely _at all_. “Why?” 

“She texted me,” you say, too much spite in your voice. You scream in your head, _this is wrong, wrong, wrong_—but your wolf doesn’t seem to notice. “Why ignore her because I can’t have you?” 

Josie swallows so thickly that you can hear it, and it only makes you sick with nausea. 

Emma picks up rather quickly. 

“Hello?” She sounds like she’s just woken up, but you don’t pay attention to that. You’re too focused on keeping eye contact with Josie.

“Hey, Emma,” you hear yourself say. Why can’t you just shut the fuck up? Maybe this is for the best. “It’s Hope.” 

The room is silent enough that you know Josie can hear every word, speaker phone or not. 

“Oh, _Hope_!” You wonder if she even looked at Caller ID. You hear her clear her throat on the other line. “Dude, it’s, like, eleven o’clock.” 

You lower your voice intentionally. 

“I’m sorry.” Josie moves forward, but you can’t tell if she’s trying to hear or if— “I just couldn’t stop thinking about you.” 

Why did you say that?

The corner of Josie’s mouth twitches down so minutely that you almost don’t catch it. Blue flickers in your eyes once, twice, and then disappears. You watch as Josie’s own tear up. Why would she be crying? She hates you. She’s always hated you. She should be _happy_ to see that you’re moving on. But you know that you’re not moving on, and your wolf is only saying this to hurt her. What’s the point if it hurts you as well? 

“Really?”

_ No, not really. All I think about is Josie. All I care about is Josie.  _

**This is what you wanted**, your wolf whispers. **You wanted her to be jealous, no? **

_ Not like this. Never like this.  _

“Yes.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who’s school just got shut down from corona haha :) sorry for the angst-y chapter, i’m going to try not writing this one right now for a little while bc i don’t want my negative emotions to translate into the story, and every time i write this i get sad for some reason. i’ll try to update as soon as possible, but i might go to some of my other stories first :) thank you for all your kind comments!


	18. Chapter 18

Josie grabs the phone out of your hand and hangs up, her eyes sparkling with tears like she can’t quite believe how awful you’re treating her. 

In the next second, a terrorizing pain like a thousand wolfsbane plants stings against your neck, and you cry out shortly. Your wolf raises your hands over the wound that’s surely to be responsible. Yet, it’s not a wound, but the triangle-shaped tattoo that Josie had placed there herself when you were trying to decide if you were affected by the potion or not. It glows angry red now, biting at your skin with no mercy. 

The pain seems to take over your entire body, paralyzing your vocal cords as you try to talk and removing all feeling in your legs as you try to stand. You feel instantly lightheaded from nausea, and you clamp down tightly on the spot as if that could take away the torment.

Josie drops the phone and gasps, slightly horrified, as if it’s all her fault, and that distracts you for a short second—until the ache consuming your entire body hits even worse than before. 

Her hands cover yours on the mark, and you bite out a hiss as the relentless burn begins to slowly simmer away. All that’s left is a faint, red glimmer and a stinging sensation at your pulse point. 

You see her through dark lashes, your vision half red, half golden, and she pauses just enough that you can feel her hands still against your neck. You realize that she did this to you. She caused this pain, and whether or not you deserved it—_you deserve it_—doesn’t matter. You’re just angry. 

In one quick movement, you push her roughly against the wall adjacent to the bed, not roughly enough to harm her but roughly enough for her to feel that your wolf is in control over the situation. You bare your teeth, not unlike the first time you were in this position, and her eyes glance down to sharp canines coated with venom. You run your tongue over the thick poison, swallowing the sting that resides from it.  


“What was _that_ for?” you growl, almost playfully, and claws pop out beneath your nails. You wiggle your fingers experimentally. “Huh, _I_ know. You’re jealous. _Hmm_?”   
  


Josie shakes her head and turns her head to the side, like she can’t even look at you. The movement exposes her neck to you, on a silver platter, and you suddenly have the most insane urge to bite her. 

And you can’t resist because _you_ truly are not in control. You’re not in control when you settle sharp, itching fingers at her hips, you’re not in control when those itching fingers wander up and down her sides almost appraisingly. Your hands are careful in their admiration, unwilling to separate with the skin beneath them but also unwilling to harm and hurt her. 

Josie makes a small noise between her lips and you allow your eyes to fall shut as your ears become eager. She squirms, but not away, arching into your touch. Does she want this as much as you? You’re overcome with the disgusting, wrong thought that she wants you to bite her. She wants you to claim her, wants you to _mate_—

And when you lean in, she lets you. You don’t close the distance all the way, hesitating. You don’t know why. Her fingers dance where her hands are still on your neck, and when you look down, your jaw is trembling. Maybe your wolf isn’t in as much control as you originally thought. When you glance up again, she’s pressing careful, angry lips to yours. 

She kisses you first this time, an infuriated, bloody-lipped kiss, and it’s all you’veever wanted—for her to accept the fact she is yours, and you are hers. Her mouth is hot and soft against your own, and you become lightheaded with something else altogether. 

It was not _you_ that kissed _her_, it was her that kissed you. That has to mean something, right? Whatever it means, your wolf understands very quickly, even when you don’t. She becomes irrationally pleased with Josie initiating things this time, and animalistic instinct begins to drift back into the comfort of your mind, completely satisfied. 

It’s you, not your wolf, when your hands grip less tightly against her hipbones. It’s you, not your wolf, that allows sharp nails to cruelly retract back into aching beds. 

It’s you, not your wolf, when your kisses become gentle and lined with apologies, like hurting her might destroy you. It’s you, not your wolf, when you back up slightly, dodging her chasing lips because you can’t breathe, you’re so overwhelmed. 

“I’m sorry—I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_.” It’s you, not your wolf, when words like whimpers fall from unforgiving lips. Tears flow freely down your face, your breath catching in your throat as you splutter over apologies. You can’t exactly function right, with your brain still muddled from that intoxicating kiss, and your eyes glimmer with remnants of gold in them. 

“Hope?” 

“I-I’m sorry,” you can’t apologize enough. It seems like nothing truly matters now. You should tell her how much you love her. And you do. “I love you—I love you _so_ _much_. I’m _sorry_.” 

“Stop, _stop_,” she tells you, like this isn’t how she wanted to hear it, like this isn’t how she wanted this to happen. Worse, she can’t quite look you in the eye. She pushes gently against your shoulders and you step to the side quickly to give her room. “Don’t say that.” 

“Wha—what?” You sound breathless, you know, but you’re more confused than concerned about breathing. Your heart is still pounding so loudly in your ears to the point you almost can’t hear her. “Why?” 

“It’s just the potion,” she says, eyes glued to the floor. Your heart stops delicately in your chest, almost as if the slightest touch might break it. Her words remind you of the way she had rejected you nearly a week ago. She sounds like she wants you to agree with her. “_It’s not real_.” 

“But you kissed me,” you insist weakly. You swallow your tears. They taste like salt and horrid reminders that she will never love you. Had it all been a figment of your imagination? 

“Only to get you back,” she explains, calmly, like she’s trying to convince someone. You don’t know that it’s you. “My dad’s looking for a cure right now. Everything will be fine.” 

“_You_. Kissed. _Me_.” 

“Everything will be fine,” she repeats, ignoring you, but her voice shakes. Does she want you to pretend nothing happened after all of this? That you only kissed her because of the potion, and she only kissed you for the same reason? 

You can’t pretend that you don’t have feelings for her, and soon enough, when Dorian explains to her on Monday that the potion can’t imitate feelings, she’ll know. 

What’s the point to prolonging it? What’s the point to pretending at all? She knows, you _know_ she knows. She _has_ to know. 

“It’s almost the full moon.” Her eyes are clouded when she wrings her hands together before stepping towards the door. “I should, I should go. I’ll come back when you’re done.” 

You stare at her in disbelief, not quite being able to register her words. She walks through the door without looking back. 

“Josie,” you call after her. She shuts the door in your face and murmurs a spell to lock it. You wrap your fingers around the bars. “Josie—please, _please_ don’t do this.” If your voice cracks, you don’t notice. The bars bend beneath your grip, before snapping right back into place magically. 

“_Josie_.” Defeated, you rattle the metal without any real strength, but she doesn’t turn around. 

Almost the instant you know she’s gone for sure, the bones in your legs fracture into weird angles. Your hands do the same, and you stop the scream erupting in your chest. It won’t do any good now, yet you wonder if it might bring Josie back. 

After several long minutes of your bones breaking and your muscles gnawing over them, you give into the change like your father taught you. Your skin stretches into fur, and your blue eyes become carnal, yellow orbs. You and your wolf are one and the same now. Your mind is no longer separated between two conflicting parties, and you feel good. You feel strong, but the weak part of you wants to call out to Josie until she comes. It slips through for barely a second, but it’s enough for a powerful jaw to snap open. 

You howl, lonely and despairing, asking for any answer at all, asking for Josie to come back. 

No one answers, and Josie doesn’t come back. 


	19. Chapter 19

** She rejected us.  **

** Again.  **

You slam your body against the metal bars for what must be the hundredth time, but it doesn’t hurt any less. Your paws are matted with blood at this point, your fur dirty and tangled from doing anything you _can_ to get out of this fucking prison. 

You should not even be trapped in here. You are a crescent wolf, you don’t deserve such disrespect. Your mother would have wanted you to run free, to be with nature, to be under the moon’s light. That’s what your father told you, at least. 

It doesn’t matter now. Josie left you, and it leaves a crimson taste in the back of your mouth like copper. You feel irrationally hurt, unjustifiably mad. You deserve to be alone, of course, but you could have never expected it to hurt this much. 

The simple conclusion is this:

The siphoner does not care about you like you want her to. She never did. She only cares about the school, and you are in the way of that. You could hurt all of these students, so it is vital that she doesn’t let that happen. That’s why she kissed you. It’s the only reason. You had imagined everything else. You had created an entire story in your head that never happened. She does not want you. She does not love you. 

All of these facts do nothing to make you feel better. You remain miserable until the early hours of Sunday morning, stuck in your wolf skin that should be comfortable. But it’s not—and before long your fur starts to feel too suffocating, your bones too heavy. 

You finally shift back a couple of minutes before Alaric and Dorian stomp down to your cell. You hear them arrive well before they barge down the stairs, and you rush to wrap a bed sheet around your naked body. 

You had previously ruined your clothes mid-shift, and they now lie in a torn pile on the ground. Just before the two men see you, you’re able to wrap the white sheet around yourself messily. You end up looking like a mix between an idiot and someone stuck back in Ancient Greece. 

“Hope! We—“ 

Alaric shuts his mouth and averts his eyes as he sees the condition his student is in. Dorian does the same. They throw you a pair of clothes and stay turned around until you finish changing. 

“We think we found something that can help you,” Alaric says, looking at the ceiling. At his words, your heart begins to pound viciously, but not in excitement. No, actually. You’re..._dreading_ his next words? “Zephrine Fentere dabbled mostly in siphoning, considering his family background. However, he was also an accomplished potions master.” 

You are barely listening to his nerdy rambling. Instead, you’re panicking inside. This panic grips at your face, as if to capture all of your attention, and drags jagged nails down your skin. It leaves you aching and burning, your lungs singeing to dust. 

“In another one of his books, he realized that every potion has its antidote, as long as one can find the inverse of every ingredient they used in the potion,” Alaric explains. 

“Together, two ingredients can neutralize the other and create a balance,” Dorian adds, and the two adults share a heated look as if fighting for the chance to break the news. “For example, an acid and a base. You know, like sodium bicarbonate and—“ 

“I’ve taken Chemistry of Magic,” you interrupt, too much poison injected into your words but you don’t care. 

“Okay.” He nods, and then continues, “Well, every ingredient has its own pH factor, we just need to find its opposite to balance out the concentration.” 

** Does he think we’re stupid?  **

An angry, violent voice bangs against the bars of your mind, urging revenge for the insult to your intelligence. You keep it buried, your teeth clenching like metal. 

“However, it’s not as simple as creating another potion.” Dorian squints slightly, like he’s trying to remember something. Hope clenches her own eyes shut, her head pounding, but neither of them notice. “We need to vaporize the solution somehow. Right now, the mixture is near solid. But you didn’t drink desiderio potum, you _inhaled_ it, so we need to get it into your body in a similar way.” 

“Dorian and I have spent all night working on it, and we’ve already prepared the solution. Normally it would take days, but Lizzie and Josie agreed to help speed things up with magic,” Alaric finishes. At the mention of Josie, your head betrays you and snaps up. He doesn’t talk about her again, and you grow disappointed. It should enamor you, that she wants to help you. It should make you blush, it should make your heart swell, but instead you feel deflated. You feel hurt. It only reminds you that she hates you. “We’re just working on a way to condense the ingredients into steam so it can react with the air. We should have it done by tonight.” 

“Oh.” Alaric slaps his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I probably should have led with this, but first we have to siphon the potion out of you, or at least what’s left. The magic of desiderio potum can be oftentimes fatal, so it is important that we take away the remaining traces in your body. Our solution will work better that way.” 

You feel sick to your stomach. God, you can’t go back. You can’t go back to before the potion. Too many things have changed. You’ve kissed and assaulted Josie Saltzman several times now, you’ve ruined your entire relationship. You can’t go back to way things were, you can’t move forward. Too much has changed, or maybe nothing at all. She has never liked you in the first place, and the more this potion got involved, the more that part stayed the same. 

You’re stuck. 

** Trust me. **

You suck in a breath.

** You don’t want this. Things are better my—our way.  **

You rub at your head, and Dorian and Alaric give you weird looks. You can’t even concentrate on how much you want to hurt them right now. 

** They’re tricking you.  **

** You will never touch Josie again if they take me from you.  **

“There’s no need,” you decide. You turn away from them, your eyes gleaming yellow. Your pupils dilate so extremely that all that’s left is a tiny slit of gold. “I feel fine.” 

“Really?” Alaric’s voice sounds confused, as he should be. A couple of hours ago, when he dragged you to these cells with Lizzie and MG, you had nearly tried to kill all three of them. But Josie is different. You would _never_ hurt her. 

“Yeah,” you murmur, a smirk that isn’t yours stretched across wild lips. The blatant lie sails smoothly out of your mouth. “Shifting into my wolf last night was a..._transformative_ experience.” 

You chuckle darkly at your little joke. “I feel _much_ better now.” 

“Okay...” Alaric lags. “We should still do it tonight to be safe...” 

“No,” you snap, swallowing the bile and fear rising in your throat. It scorches your insides on the way down. You try to appear cool and collected despite it, shrugging slightly. “I mean, it’d be a waste of time.” 

“And I need to catch up on homework,” you tack on, trying to appeal to him as the headmaster of this school. He just shakes his head. 

“Your health is the most important thing right now,” he says. “Listen, Hope. The potion created a chemical imbalance in your brain. It’s been affecting you long enough and to a great _enough_ degree that it’s managed to fragment the very structure of your mind. This will fix that.” 

** He’s wrong.  **

** Make him understand.  **

You turn around and face him. 

“No, it won’t. Can’t you see?” You laugh humorlessly. “I’m better than I’ve ever been.” 

Alaric watches you for a long moment before inclining his head, but his eyes remain narrowed with suspicion. “Alright. You’re free to go, then. I’ll check up on you later.” 

Dorian makes a sound at the back of his throat to argue, but Alaric swipes him with his elbow to shut him up. 

You walk by the both of them, laughing silently as you pass. 

Yes. 

It’s much better this way. 

—

“If you’re here to convince me,” you growl out, opening the door of the fridge, ravenously hungry. You smelled her the second she walked into the kitchen. How could you ever misplace her unique scent? “You can forget about it.” 

Yet, you notice that Josie smells different, like she’s wearing a new perfume or like she showered using someone else’s shampoo. It’s not unpleasant, just different, and your nose works extra hard to devour the new scent. 

“No.” You see Josie shake her head out of the corner of your eye, and you close the fridge door to look at her—_really_ look at her. Your mind swarms. 

You had come into the kitchen after holing yourself in your room for the rest of the day, hiding away from your classmates’ attempts to get you to take the potion. MG, in particular, was _very_ unconvincing, and you had pretended to go along with it before ditching the boy at the last moment. 

Lizzie had threatened you, of all things. She had whispered insult after insult, trying to challenge you or make you rise to the bait. Your wolf was very amused by her belittling attempts, and swept her to the side just as you had MG before her. 

Josie was different. She had not approached you all day, and it makes you bitter and yearning for her all at once. How dare she reject you time and time again? How dare she kiss you and not mean it? How dare you love a mate that does not want you back? You hate how much you crave her, incessantly, like an infection that can never go away. It drives you absolutely crazy.

You focus back to the girl at hand. 

There’s something indecipherable in her eyes, something there in her sharp pupils and dark irises. The siphoner stands with her back ramrod straight, but she seems relaxed, casual even. The way she stares at you makes you feel great, and you preen underneath her gaze. 

“Actually, I agree with you,” she says pointedly, stepping closer, but keeping her distance all the same. You smirk as your eyes trace the length of her legs, before locking with her own.It’s very clear to you now. Your wolf was completely right. _She_ is _your_ mate, no one else’s. 

“Yeah?” Your voice is mostly curious, if only a hint skeptical. She might be trying to manipulate you, but your wolf doesn’t care. Your wolf can only be happy that she’s talking to you at _all_. The last couple of hours have been too painful, and it’s almost midnight now. How had you survived today without her until this moment? 

Josie nods nonchalantly. 

“Yeah.” She shrugs. “I can totally understand why you don’t want the cure. Your wolf is stronger. More powerful. It doesn’t hesitate. It takes what it wants...what _you_ want...”

As she trails off, she turns her back to you and starts to wash her hands in the nearby sink. 

“I knew you’d see things my way,” you murmur, watching her very carefully. The old-Hope would be hurt right now, that she thinks you’ve improved, but the new-you is celebrating. 

You walk up behind her as she continues to wash her hands. Her shoulders tense, as if she can feel you coming closer, but she doesn’t turn around. 

“Do you?” She turns around at the deep timbre of your voice just behind her ear. The water continues to run in the sink behind her, and her hands drip between the both of you as she makes a sound of surprise. 

Perhaps, you had gotten to her too quickly. Whatever. You just couldn’t hold back. You can’t control yourself around her. 

You place two hands on the counter, right by her sides. She glances at your arms as you trap her in before looking at you with confusion at your question. The sound of the water running relaxes and irritates you all at once, and you stare at her mouth as she answers, “Do I what...?” 

The tone of her own voice is so soft, and it caresses your face before it reaches your ears. You think that her mouth looks soft as well, full and pillowy in that way that makes you want to lean forward and claim them with your own. 

“Do you know what I want?” Her eyes snap up to yours, previously fixed on the floor, and you see chocolate melt right in front of you. She bites her lip and wets it with a quick swipe of her tongue. Your own eyes follow the movement with a yellow haze. 

“Me,” she answers, breathy and needy and then her hands are wrapped around your neck and pulling you closer. Your lips meet hungrily, the start of a rumble growing low in your chest as you move forward and press into her completely. 

She nibbles at your bottom lip almost shyly, and you almost smirk against her lips before exploring into her mouth with a filthy tongue and careful teeth. You knew she couldn’t resist you, just like _you_ can’t resist _her_. You belong together. 

Your hands find their place at her hips just as her fingers find their place in your hair. It doesn’t take her very long to regret kissing you, and she sighs and pushes you away quickly enough that you growl with bared teeth. 

You allow her lips to avoid your own, instead letting your head fall into the crook of her neck. A groan escapes your mouth at her heady scent—something is different, something is weird, but you can’t care, you don’t care—and you start to rhythmically push your hips against hers, grinding into her against the counter. She lets out something that sounds a lot like a moan, and your instincts tell you to bite her. 

** Do it. **

** Claim.  **

Venom collects in your mouth, and your eyes flash from blue to yellow, a conflicting mantra emerges on repeat—don’t bite her. **Bite her.** Don’t bite her. **Bite her. **

** Bite her.  **

The wolf wins. Your eyes settle on yellow, and it’s not you who opens a dangerous mouth passed sharp teeth. “So _greedy_...” 

Stop. 

Josie’s eyes flutter open. 

“You always get to play with our mate.” 

Stop. No. 

Her eyebrows furrow. No. Your wolf isn’t talking to her. She’s talking to you. 

“It’s _my_ turn.” 

_No_. 

Your hands travel quickly below her thighs to tug and lift her up against the counter. You push her legs open and move between them, your canines elongating so much that they cut into your lips and leave them bleeding. Sharp claws snap at the tips of your nails. 

Josie pulls away from you as her head falls against the cupboard, panting heavily. 

Your eyes glow with excitement at the pretty picture—her hair tousled, her clothes wrinkled over her body, her legs spread open as her chest rises and falls. Her neck is covered by old, purple hickeys and new faint, red marks. She looks thoroughly disheveled and your wolf loves it. 

You don’t waste time, licking a long line up the flesh of Josie’s throat exposed to you. The siphoner keens under your tongue, her nails scratching against the back of your neck as she pulls you closer. 

Your hands wander up her thighs, and she thrashes beneath them, arching her body to get as close to you as possible. Your fingers only itch higher and higher—where she needs them the most. She cants up when you touch a specific point, and your fingers linger back with satisfaction. 

They skim over the same sensitive spot of her pelvis once, twice, and then you press down. _Hard_. Arousal burns hot in the pit of your stomach at her reaction. 

She yelps into your ear and jumps just enough that she almost bangs her head into the cupboard. Her hands clutch at your collar, and you grin into her neck, breathing deeply.

**Claim her or _I_ will**, your wolf tells you. Your limbs return to your control in the next moment. 

“Do I smell good?” Josie asks, her breathing slightly ragged. Your smile lessens at the weird question, but you answer her anyways. 

“Yes.” You leave another close-mouthed kiss against her collarbone. “Very good.” 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers a second later, out of nowhere. Distracted, you lean away and give her space, and then a soft, red light begins to radiate from below your chin. You look down, batting her hands weakly away from your neck as you realize that she’s siphoning from you. 

Your smile slips off your face completely. 

“What are you doing?” you choke out, your words husky from your lust-fogged brain. Your knees even wobble, and you grip the counter to hold yourself up. 

Exhaustion overwhelms your senses, causing your eyelids to droop and your front to slump forward. 

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, and you don’t have the strength to answer or attempt to remove her hands from you again. The glow of her hands brings warmth to your vision but lights a fire behind your eyes, and your wolf begins to scream, coming to a sudden revelation. 

No. 

_ No. No. No.  _

As she continues to siphon from you, the wolf roaring at the back of your mind vanishes to a mere whisper. Your eyes fall back to blue, and your canines retract. 

You swipe a tongue over your lips at the loss of them, tasting blood. It sticks to your lips like candy or soda. You swallow the crimson taste with a cough, your mouth stinging from the remnants of venom. You flex your fingers out as they spasm uncontrollably, your claws popping painfully back beneath your nail beds. 

The wolf fractured between the edges of your mind is no more. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have to admit, writing hope like this is so creepy, good thing the worst of it is over


	20. Chapter 20

Your whole body goes numb, from your head to your toes, from your legs to your arms. 

And then, everything comes back all at once. Sound rushes back to your ears, loud and buzzing red. Feeling pricks at your skin, pulls at your body, thickens like lava in your veins. 

Her scent reaches you last. It’s instantly intoxicating and all-consuming, bringing with it such an intense flood of memories that your heart nearly stop beating altogether. 

“_Oh_,” you breathe. 

Oh. 

Oh. _God_.

What did you do? Oh no. No. No. No. 

You’re a monster. 

(Just like your father?) 

Shame knocks you in the chest and leaves you breathless. It comes, winded and fast, hard and relentless, right against your lungs, right below your heart. It rattles your rib cage and parts bloody lips, it beckons a sob through aching teeth. 

You can’t fix this. You can’t repair the damage you caused. Not to yourself, not to Josie—

And _Josie_.

Fuck. She’s still half-curled around you, her legs wrapped loosely around your waist. Her hands remain where they are between your shoulders, almost holding you up as your head hangs over her, chin to your chest. 

You can’t even look her in the eye. From this angle, you can already see the state of her clothing—shorts torn into shreds of pieces by dangerous claws, a long line of skin exposed across her torso from where you had ripped her shirt without noticing. How hadn’t you noticed that? How hadn’t you...? How could you do this to her? What happened to being careful? 

Lifting your gaze up enough, you can just barely make out blotted skin of purple and red. Once, you had loved the way she bruised so easily, just for you. You had loved the color of blood rising to the surface just beneath your lips, you had loved leaving evidence that she was yours.

Now, you hate it—you hate that there are love bites riddled from her chest to her jaw, some still glistening with venom and saliva. Others are more faded, maybe hours or days old, you don’t know—you can’t remember. 

In fact, there are many things you can’t remember, but there are just as many you can’t forget. 

You can’t forget wanting to bite Josie, wanting to claim her, wanting to mate her, but how do any of those three things relate? How would biting her have claimed her? What does mate even mean? 

_Not just sex_, a part of you thinks. It means much more, your heart is _screaming_ that it means much more, but your head is oddly silent. What does it all mean? 

You don’t know. Things had been easy to understand as a wolf. You hadn’t had to ask questions, but now, with the wolf part of you banished to the back of your mind, it’s proving exceedingly difficult to comprehend anything at all. 

You used to think that your animalistic urges—wolf instincts—consisted only of turning into a beast whenever possible, to soothe the ache of being human, to run free from mortal stresses. 

_ Bite. Claim. Mate.  _

Those are all new, and while you had understood them all so easily under the influence of the potion, now they only mean confusion and a headache to you. 

How is it that you can’t remember? How is something so clear and simple to your wolf, so confusing and complicated to you? 

“Hope?” 

You let out a sigh before you can stop yourself. Josie’s voice is still so sweet, so caring. You allow yourself to drown in the sound of your name on her lips, you allow yourself to suffocate in the feeling of her breath puffing against the top of your head. 

Why is she still here? Is it because you’re trapping her in? You should probably move...

Yet, you can’t. 

Your mind is still swarming, struggling to catch up with the past day’s events. You form a list in your head. 

One: Alaric called a lockdown. 

Two: he locked you into a cell. 

Three: you assaulted Josie. 

Four: you said—

You told Josie that you love her. 

How could you do that? 

“Oh,” you murmur again, your head completely empty. The silence is almost stifling, almost suffocating. The only voice in your head is your own. It feels...lonely. 

Yet, it’s not all gone. There’s a single part of you—very small, very, very tiny—that is shaking from withdrawal. That small part twitches throbbing fingers, singing to your blood with a lullaby of contaminating it. 

It would be so, so easy to sneak back into Dorian’s classroom and allow yourself to become addicted just once more—it would be so fucking _easy_ to dose yourself again and let your wolf finish what she started.

Are you crazy for wanting to seek out the potion? 

The answer is, yes.

Yes. You are. 

“I-I’m s-sorry, I-I’m so sorry,” your voice cracks, a mess of whimpered syllables and unforgiving apologies. How could you have allowed yourself to get this insane, this demented? How could you have hurt her like this? 

You told her that you love her. You told her...

Why? 

Why would would you do that? 

Josie probably hates you. If she doesn’t pity you for such an embarrassing confession, she must absolutely _loathe_ you for it. 

Yes. She must think you’re the creepiest person alive. These past few weeks have been the most you two have talked in years. You don’t know each other. You’re almost perfect strangers, if not for the small fact that you both go to the same school and that both your families’ lives had intertwined so messily a time ago. 

Fuck. 

You need to take the words back—tell her that you didn’t mean it, that you hadn’t meant to say you love her—but it would be much too suspicious if you did it now. 

No. You can’t do it now. You can’t do it _ever_. 

You can’t take back the words, and it leaves a bitter taste at the back of your throat like acid, a thick gulp of misery that you can’t swallow down past the lump in your throat. 

“Hope.” 

That same voice, softer now. 

Forgetting yourself, you raise your head and stare up into dark-brown eyes, swirls of molten chocolate that speak of too much forgiveness. 

No. That can’t be right. 

Why would she ever forgive you? You destroyed your relationship with her. You abused her endlessly. 

She shouldn’t forgive you. Not ever. 

How can she? How? 

You invited this foul potion into your body, you allowed it to distort something you’ve desired time and time again. Love became ugly underneath its influence. The potion twisted the one good thing you had into something vile and horrid. The one good thing you had—

But did you ever really have her? 

No, not really. 

You had stolen glances across the dining hall. You had jealous looks that spoke of your family’s anger—white-hot, too much, always too much—whenever someone else flirted with her. You had moments of cowardice when you couldn’t summon the courage to talk to her. You never did. 

Yet, even now, Josie’s gaze is endless in its compassion, in its understanding. You don’t deserve her kindness, this mercy she’s showing you. You don’t. 

“I need to go.” The words come out firm, strong like you haven’t been able to be this entire time. Not strong enough for her. You aren’t. 

“I need to go,” you repeat, to make yourself believe the words, to make yourself listen. You finally lean away, eyes tracing her soft face, then lowering to the faint bloom of yet another bruise underneath her chin. 

It disgusts you. You’re absolutely mortified. 

(What have you done?) 

“Please don’t.” 

Josie’s own eyes are wide now, her body shrinking back into the cupboard behind her. But still, her legs pull you closer, her heels dig into the low of your back, your hands stay gripping the edge of the counter in defeat. You’ve always been too weak for her. 

_ Too weak.  _

“No. I can’t trust myself...” Where are the right words to tell her why she should hate you? Have they suddenly evaded you? Why does your throat feel so closed up? “...Around you.” 

“I think it’d be best if I go,” you explain, but why aren’t you meeting her eyes? Is it because you’re a coward? Yes. It is. You can’t face what you’ve done. God. This is so humiliating. “If I kept my distance, for the time being.” 

Is it possible to be this ashamed? This embarrassed? Somehow, your face burns red and loses color all at once. The siphoner only continues to melt her eyes into you—so, so hotly that you feel yourself catch onto flames. 

You can’t take it after a while, and you look away, burning, burning, burning...

“Do I not get a say?” The anger in her words causes your head to snap back up. The utter rage on Josie’s face even surprises you, enough for your lips to part soundlessly. You suck in a ragged breath as her fingers grip lightly around your shoulders, her eyes prickling with tears. 

She blinks and one runs down her cheek, tracking a line down the side of her face. You watch the tear as it falls to her thighs, bursting silently with the first contact to soft skin. 

It makes your chest cave in. It makes your heart snap desperately in longing, a plea that falls on deaf ears. 

“I’m sorry,” you try to back away, but she doesn’t allow you to once again. Her hands become tight against your neck, her palms easing their way along the flesh of your throat. 

You groan at the sting of her touch against the triangle mark still branded deep into your skin. It doesn’t hurt, not really, but it reminds you of a memory left unremembered. 

“Josie,” you plead, a broken word that freezes in your throat like ice. If you feel the cold, you don’t shiver. “Let me go.” 

A shaky hand—is it it your own?—reaches between the both of you and gently tugs away the fingers clutching at your shoulders and neck. They slump to Josie’s lap limp and stiff, a soft whimper following them. 

You don’t know if the sound came from you or her. 

The warmth clouding over you vanishes as her legs drop from around your waist. The heady heat of her scent disappears as she leans away from you. The sear of her eyes on your own fades as she lowers them to her lap. 

Where you hadn’t been able to shiver before, your body now racks in deep shudders. 

She lets you go, and it’s cold, cold, _cold_. 

—

You’re still wearing the uniform Alaric gave you in the morning when you finally climb into your bed. The only difference is, you’ve changed into a pair of sweatpants and you’re only wearing the white button-up. The collar is beyond ruffled, half of it spiked up and the other half laid flat. You’ve already rolled up the sleeves to your elbows—you’re hot, too hot—when a knock sounds against your door. 

It comes hard once, and then again and again, ringing loudly in your sensitive ears. Your clumsy fingers still from complicated buttons. Since when had it gotten so difficult to take off a shirt? 

“Look.” A voice that grates on your nerves sounds through the door, far too familiarly for you. “Her lights are on underneath the door. I told you she’d be awake.” 

Your eyebrows furrow on their own. It’s been an hour since what happened in the kitchen. You had spent most of that time staring at the tattoo on your neck, wondering what could have happened if your wolf had been a little stronger, if you had been a little weaker. 

More knocks. 

“Open up, Mikaelson.” 

You freeze, not expecting to be called out by Lizzie Saltzman so plainly. But did you really think you could pretend that nothing has happened? Did you think that you could have gotten away with ignoring everyone else, staying buried inside your room? 

“Lizzie, please. It’s late.” Your eyes flutter closed at the gentle timbre of Josie’s voice. It floats through the door and caresses your ears like a soft breeze. 

“No.” You can practically imagine the glare on Lizzie’s face, the frown pulling at her lips. “She needs to answer for what she’s done.” 

_Shit_. You freeze. Does that mean—does Lizzie know? 

Shit. Shit. Shit—

No. 

It’s okay if she knows. 

She _should_ know. 

She should know the torment you’ve caused, the misery you’ve inflicted on Josie. You deserve whatever she’ll do to you now because of it. Even if she kills you. It’s only right—revenge for her sister, it’s only right. 

The door flies open before you can even button your shirt back up completely. Lizzie Saltzman appears on the other side, no sign of her sister beside her. The blonde is still wearing her pajamas, obviously minutes from being woken up. She has one glowing, red hand raised on the wall, the other flat against the now-open door. 

You observe as she then folds her arms across her chest, tapping her foot. Her fury is very clear in her eyes, and you feel too exposed for more reasons than one. 

You instantly move to cover yourself up, but you stop at the decidedly unimpressed look the siphoner gives you. You fight the blush rising up your neck, attempting to meet her gaze with a firm one of your own. 

“What the hell did you do to my sister, Mikaelson?” The aforementioned sister is out of sight, maybe hiding behind the wall. You know that she’s here, though. You can sense her nearby, in the way your skin hums anxiously, in the way your ears prick in search of her voice. 

“I...” God, how can you explain something like this? How can you...? _Fuck_. 

It seems that Lizzie doesn’t care for your useless stammering or any excuse or apology you can think up, because she ignores you and continues talking. 

“She showed up in our room, in the middle of the night, looking like she’d been attacked by a pack of starving hyenas.” You swallow miserably. With every word, Lizzie’s voice seems to get higher and higher. She begins to yell. “Her clothes are completely shredded and torn. She’s riddled with bruises.” 

Yes, you know, you want to scream back, but your lips remain sealed. Apologies unravel in your throat and become tangled in paralyzed vocal cords. 

“There’s a rather distinct, if I do say so myself, impression of a handprint on her hip—four fingers and a thumb, I counted!” Lizzie continues, and your mouth runs painfully dry. You gulp to no avail. You even shake your head, wanting to deny that you left such a nasty bruise behind, but the tone of Lizzie’s voice is unmistakable. She isn’t lying. You hurt Josie. You fucking assaulted her. 

Lizzie’s voice then takes on an almost patronizing, condemning note, her words filled with beyond contempt and disgust. 

“_Yes_,” she drags out, sneering slightly. “I thought, she must have wandered into the woods outside and gotten herself mauled by an animal. Oh, silly, _silly_ Josie!” 

You visibly flinch. 

“Come to find out, it wasn’t an animal at all, but a monster.” She seems to pause, maybe for dramatic effect. It doesn’t matter. You already know what’s coming. How can you avoid it? “_You_!” 

You wince once more at the high screech of her voice, feeling thoroughly scolded. You distantly begin to hear the sound of your classmates next door rising from slumber. 

“Josie!” Lizzie calls, turning her back to you and yelling at something you can’t see past the wall. The blonde is still standing in the middle of the doorway, one foot in your room and one in the hall. “Come over here!” 

You don’t hear Josie’s reply, but she must do something because Lizzie suddenly stomps over to you. 

“Fine,” she growls, grabbing the hem of your shirt and pulling you outside your room, just as a couple of doors from neighboring dorms swing open. 

Students begin to pop their heads into the hall in wonder, some even taking their phones out as understanding dawns on them. They immediately jump onto the first chance to witness you getting your ass handed to you, like leeches on blood. 

It should surprise you, their craving for drama, for seeing your downfall, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t surprise you at all. No one likes you at this school. No one cares for you. They never will. 

When the first flash goes off, you don’t blink. You barely even think about the fact that classmates you’ve known for years are actually filming this, because all you can think about is how Josie Saltzman is barely three yards away from you, and you can’t fucking breathe.

“Look!” Lizzie throws you forward, letting go of her ruthless hold on your shirt. She gestures to Josie, but you keep your eyes on the wall past her shoulder. “_Look_. At. Her.” 

At the harsh set to her words, your eyes snap to the brunette forcefully. 

A frown snaps at your mouth as you get your first look of Josie since what happened in the kitchen. You instantly grow pale, and your breath catches in your throat at the sight of her. 

She’s still wearing the same clothes from an hour before. The bruises along her neck have only grown darker in the time since you’ve last seen them, a mess of reds, purples, and blacks that has your eyes glancing away and blinking with tears. 

Your neighbors must be having a field day. You imagine that this is quite the picture, indeed. With Josie, who’s wearing torn clothes, her body littered with hickies. With you, your eyes guilty and dark, half the buttons of your shirt undone. 

Perfect fucking timing.

Josie is probably beyond humiliated. You have embarrassed the both of you. You’ve brought shame to her name, you’ve brought shame to your own. If the way she’s looking at the floor right now is any indication, she must hate you. 

Yet, her sister is blind to your new audience. Somehow, she is able to completely disregard the people snapping photos and filming videos around the three of you. 

“You do not get to hurt my sister without any repercussions, do you hear me?” Lizzie persists, pointing her finger accusingly. Her single digit digs into your chest. You nod numbly. “She is not an object for you to play with. She is done with you. If you step within a single foot of Josie ever again, I will find a way to kill you, powerful tribrid or not. You can _never_ touch her again. Do you understand me? Stay away from her or—“

“Okay,” you agree, cutting her off. Your voice is rough, almost unfamiliar to your own ears. Lizzie leans back from her tirade, surprised. 

“What?” 

“I’ll...” Your throat becomes suspiciously tight. You clear it desperately, your eyes finding Josie’s just as she looks up from the floor. Blue meets brown in a battle of sky and dirt. The pain you see is enough to steel you. “I’ll stay away.” 

The blonde raises her eyebrows, backing off slightly. You can no longer look Josie in the eyes. It’s too much for you to handle. 

“Huh.” Lizzie cocks her head to the side, all anger leaving her face. Puzzlement replaces it. “That took less arguing than I thought it would.” 

She gathers herself quickly, flipping her hair before grabbing Josie’s wrist and pulling her away. “Whatever. Mark my words, she-wolf.” 

You watch as the two of them leave the hallway, with Lizzie shooting daggers at every person poking their heads out of their rooms until they retreat back and close their doors again. 

You stare at the back of Josie’s head, silently begging her to look back, for just one more glance, for just one more moment. 

She doesn’t. 

—

In the morning, it’s hard to go to class like normal and pretend nothing happened. 

Before breakfast, Alaric texts you about a hundred times requesting to see you. When that doesn’t work, he calls you to his office on the intercom. You ignore him and head straight for the dining hall—and if students stare at you and whisper in gossip on your way there, you ignore them, too. 

“It has to be some kind of BDSM thing, right?” you hear as you stand in the breakfast line, your neck itching from every pair of eyes in the room staring a hole into it. You don’t entirely recognize the voice, but when you glance over your shoulder, you think the person speaking is a witch in your Latin class.“I mean, would you let me do that to you, babe?” 

You nearly drop the apple you’ve been weighing in your hand, but instead your fingers tighten around the red skin and dig indents into the core. 

Fuck. 

She’s talking about you. 

She’s talking about what you did to Josie. 

“Ask me that again and I’ll break up with you,” the witch’s girlfriend answers, amusement heavy in her voice. The fact that they’re joking about this makes your teeth clench in barely concealed anger, but you decide to keep your back facing them. 

You won’t give into your anger. Not again. 

Especially not after...

(You can’t even think it.) 

“What a _whore_.” The words get louder the more you try to escape them. “She probably let Mikaelson feed off of her, too.” 

Your shoulders are practically shaking now—you recognize that voice. It’s a werewolf from your PE class, one that’s never known when to keep his fucking mouth shut. 

How _dare_ he call Josie that, you seethe, your fingers and nails sticky from the red fruit crumbling in your palm. You bite down on your bottom lip to stop from starting a fight. It works. 

“Matt, that doesn’t even make sense,” someone else whispers, not so quietly. “She’s not a vampire.” 

A pause. 

“Yet.”

They realize that you can hear them, right? 

“You know what they say...” This particular voice comes a few people behind you in line. You notice the uptilt in the tone right away, promising an innuendo to come. Unbidden, you glower at the girl’s back in front of you, despite the fact that she’s done nothing but move slowly. 

You desperately want to leave, but you’re only about a couple of spots away from those granola bars you adore so much. You’re also about a couple seconds away from shoving the people in front of you. “...A lady in the streets—a freak in the sheets.” 

_ What the hell?  _

Your head betrays you, snapping so suddenly behind you that you’re afraid you might get whiplash. You definitely surprise the person behind you, though, who drops their tray to the floor and gasps silently. 

You look past them, to the person that had spoken moments before. However, he’s not looking at you, but at Josie Saltzman who’s sitting across the dining hall with her friends. The boy’s male friend nods his head and they share a small laugh, their eyes flickering up and down as if they’re checking the brunette out. 

It completely and utterly nauseates you. In fact, you feel acid rise in your throat, thick and slimy and hot. You cough against it, even if it burns your throat on the way down. 

Screw the granola bars. You were never hungry anyways. 

You step out of the line, throwing the ruined apple into a nearby trashcan as you weave through the tables. Unfortunately, you’ll have to pass by Josie and her group of friends on the way out of the room, which has your stomach knotting in dread. 

From this close, you can see that her clothes are clean and flawless, no semblance of any rips or tears. Her neck is bare, too, and you think that maybe Lizzie performed some type of glamour spell. 

It doesn’t stop you from wondering if she can still feel the touch of your lips, if she can still the feel the sting of your teeth latching onto her skin—or if Lizzie healed the bruises as well as hiding them.

No.

You really need to stop wondering. 

You really need to stop thinking. 

Yet, your thoughts continue to torment you. You can’t help thinking that Josie hadn’t been in the dining room a couple of minutes ago, that you had looked around for her a million times pointlessly. 

Did she look around for you, _too_? 

Had she searched the room like you had upon entering, her eyes scanning every table and person? Had she been filled with disappointment and relief all at once when she couldn’t seem to find you? Had she—

_No_. 

You can’t do this to yourself anymore. 

You promised you would stay away. 

And you _will_. 

You keep your head down as you pass her table, the invisible mark on your neck itching, itching, itching...

“I think it’s kind of hot, actually.” You recognize this voice as that of a newly-turned vampire’s, twisting your body to face her before you even realize it. You narrow your eyes as the girl smiles back at you, tauntingly, as if playing with you. 

“_Dude_,” her friend says. The first girl looks away, back to her friend. 

“What?” She rolls her eyes. “Are you saying that you wouldn’t let Hope Mikaelson fuck you six ways to Sunday if she offered?”

You’re beyond relieved when the bell finally rings, dismissing everyone to head to class.


	21. Chapter 21

Right after the bell rings, you head to Traditional Magic on instinct, a routine you’ve kept up since the semester started. 

Habits are always hard to shake, and you make it around the corner to the hallway of the classroom before you stop yourself. 

Before you _remember_. 

(Why is it so easy to forget?) 

You haven’t realized it until now, but you’re sweating. Shaking. A part of you can still smell that familiar mix of vanilla and cinnamon—as potent and heady as it had been that first day in class when Dorian had partnered up you and Josie. 

Another part of you knows that you’re just imagining it. That it’s all in your head. 

Josie’s not here, now, and the potion isn’t either. At least, it’s not inside of you, not anymore. 

But it _could_ be. 

If you think about it, desiderio potum is only a couple doors down the hallway, and you could expose yourself with it just as easily as you had done in the first place. 

But you can’t. 

Hands trembling, you duck into the nearest bathroom, needing to ground yourself. The hallways are too loud, too crowded, but when you press your ear against the door of the bathroom, you hear nothing at all. 

It’s just to refresh yourself, you think, as you open the door and stand in front of the sink, just to splash water against your face and clear the sweat from your pores. 

And it does. Refresh you, that is. 

The chill of the water distracts you from the fire wanting Josie Saltzman sets in you. It clears your head and makes you forget about how much she smells like heaven on Earth, makes you forget how much her scent lingers on you like a love potion of its own. 

Seconds pass—minutes? hours?—where you allow the water to soak into your skin, into your shirt. It drips down your chin and forms a ring around the collar of your neck but you don’t care. 

You only bother to collect yourself when the door unlocks and swings open. You instantly stand up straighter and raise your chin high, trying your best to place your expressionless mask back on, but it’s all in vain. 

Nothing can quite prepare you for the moment that same, familiar scent hits your nose like smoke and forms a lump in the back of your throat like soot. 

You freeze, turning your body away from the sink slowly. You don’t notice how your hand crumples the paper towel you had been using to pat yourself dry. 

You don’t notice a lot of things.

But you _do_ notice just as many. 

Josie’s face is wet like yours. 

That’s the first thing you notice. 

But not from water. From tears. 

She hasn’t seen you yet, but you can’t tear your eyes away. You should be leaving already. You should be staying away like you promised, yet you can’t move a single inch. 

You watch as Josie wipes at her eyes angrily, her head to her chin and her gaze to the floor. She’s so focused on the path to the nearest stall that she has no idea someone else is in here with her. 

Until, she _does_. 

The second her eyes fall on you, she stutters in her step, stopping so suddenly that she has to place a hand against the wall to steady herself. You stare back, trying and failing to hide the way your breath hitches like a loud hiccup in dead-silence. 

Of course.

Of _fucking_ course you had made the mistake of going to the bathroom near Dorian’s class instead of the one in your room. If only you had been patience enough to wait. 

If only. 

You realize that Josie has stopped crying now. 

Maybe it’s from her surprise at seeing you, maybe she had been crying because of you to begin with. 

You also realize that a few things have changed. Namely, how you feel. 

When you were in her proximity underneath the influence of the potion, your stomach would feel like an empty pit—like it was cloying and restless with hunger, hunger for Josie and only Josie. 

Now, it feels like it is buzzing with a swarm of butterflies. They dance in your belly and leave you—for once, not angry—but nervous. How long has it been since you last talked to her? 

Just yesterday, maybe, but it feels like there are miles and centuries between the both of you. Or, are you stuck in time, instead, like all the clocks in the world had quit working the second her eyes had stopped on yours? 

And her eyes...

They’re impossibly light, right now. As if her tears have brightened them somehow. Her dark lashes frame them, and she looks up at you beneath them. 

It makes you breathless. 

Your heart can’t help but give a phantom beat in your chest—_phantom_, because it has long since stopped beating—and you swallow hard as heat crawls up your throat like an apology on the tip of your tongue. 

Your apologies are useless, now, though. They mean nothing. Not to her. Not to anyone. 

_ Stay away.  _

That promise is all you have left. 

You finally avert your eyes from hers, shifting your gaze to the floor as you throw away the paper towel in your hand and walk towards the door. Your steps are numb. Your face is numb. Your body is numb, if not for her burning gaze on your back as you pass her. 

“Unbelievable.” 

You pause with your hand curled around the door knob. Is she talking to you? She must be. 

Or maybe she’s talking to the floor tiles? The sink? The ceiling? The paper towels? You want her to be talking to anything but you, anything—

Anything to keep you facing away from her, anything to allow you to turn away from the tear tracks running down her face. 

Funny. 

You have never been able to do that. 

How can you turn away from the sound of her crying? How can you look the other way when you know she isn’t okay? 

You can’t, and it’s _funny_ because trying to not care about Josie is like trying not to breathe. It only works for about a minute or two before she leaves you gasping for air. 

“What’s wrong?” you ask, drawing your eyebrows together in concern. Oh, how much you want to pull her into your arms, how much you want to comfort her and hold her and be held in return. How much—

“Apparently, I’m the school slut now,” Josie says, almost like she’s talking to herself, as she pulls about fifty paper towels out of the dispenser angrily. “How is that fair?” 

A paper towel gets stuck and she struggles with it for about five seconds before giving up and slamming her hand against the dispenser in frustration. It’s not a big shock when she whirls on you with fury in her eyes, but your throat bobs nervously, anyway. 

“How is any of this fair?” she continues, her breath coming hot and shallow. “How is...?” 

You wrongly choose not to speak. 

You don’t think it’s fair. You don’t think it’s fair at all. You had spent the entire night, tossing and turning, wondering why it had to be you that the potion chose to torment, wondering why it had to be Josie that you sucked into this mess like a fucking black hole, because that is all you do. You take, and you take, and you fucking _take_—

“Answer me!” You blink out of your thoughts quickly, stunned and completely taken aback at how angry Josie is. 

This is a very different girl than the one you had kissed last night, who had begged you not to go. 

Maybe the both of you are different. 

Maybe neither of you have changed at all.

Still, you’ve taken too long to say anything, and now Josie is even more upset. 

“God, you’re such a fucking coward,” she curses, and you don’t think you’ve ever heard her use profanity like this. She begins shaking her head, almost sadly, almost incredulously, like she can’t quite believe what a terrible person you are. “And to think...” 

You lick your lips. They’re so chapped. Have you been kissing her with chapped lips? Fuck. 

“To think what?” you ask, running your tongue along the inside of your teeth as you clench them shut. God. You need to stop talking. You need to stop speaking. You need to stop. 

“That’s seriously the only thing you got from that?” Josie starts to laugh like a madwoman, but all you can hear is the sharp agony of her silence in between. 

She hates you. And you need to let her. You need to stay away. 

You need to—

There it is again. 

_ You need to stop.  _

“Can’t you understand?” It’s too hard. It’s so hard to keep your mouth shut when she is not five feet away from you. It’s too hard. “I don’t know what to say!” 

Your lips curl into a snarl, but it’s not animalistic. Just—

Lost. Desperate. 

“I don’t know how to apologize.” You move forward, surprising her enough that her back collides with the edge of the sink’s counter. Even then, you take another step, unable to resist closing the distance. “And I certainly don’t know how to get back to where we were before.” 

You bring a hand up, you clench it into a fist, clench your eyes shut, drop the fist, open your eyes. Her cool breath mists across your face, the plump of her bottom lip drawing you in. 

“I...” you trail off, the right words escaping you, but not just in this moment. They have abandoned you for far longer. “I can’t even remember half the things I did to you.” 

A droplet of water drips from the faucet and hits the drain of the sink. 

You don’t have a second to think before Josie lunges at you—no, not a second at all before her lips land ruthlessly on yours. 

You stumble back in surprise, but she just presses into you even more hungrily, an explosion of pouty lips and fire and everything you’ve ever wanted but nothing you thought you’d ever get. 

Her hands find your shoulders just as your arms encircle her waist, and you figure that she must want you as close as you want her because she pushes her hips against yours and molds her chest into your own. 

In the places where you touch, you can feel your skin buzzing and singing its praise, even underneath all of your clothing. It feels like your veins are not veins at all, but wires coiled tight with electricity. 

She is so sweet, too sweet for someone like you, and the first taste of her when you swipe your tongue along the line of her lips nearly gives you a toothache. 

She might smell like cinnamon but she tastes like it, too. Cinnamon and icing and every fucking good thing you can remember and will never forget ever again. 

You had never noticed this before, you had never noticed because your kisses with Josie were always blood-stained and dripping with venom. The sting of werewolf toxins and crimson copper had delighted your wolf, had satisfied the potion. But this part is for you. 

Only for you. 

How many times, had you kissed her without realizing that? How many times had you not appreciated her taste, her scent, not truly, never truly? 

“_There_.” Josie leans away to pant against your mouth, still so close that her lips brush yours as she forms the word. You chase after them with your own and she lets you for just another brief moment before pulling away. 

“Remember,” she pleads, and then—

Another kiss, another second where you can’t catch your breath completely before she kisses you again, before she interrupts herself again. Voice a whisper, she repeats, “Remember.” 

This time, when she reconnects your lips, she pulls your bottom one between her own and lets it go without giving you time to respond or savor it. You tremble as she backs away. 

“Please remember.” 

You nod shakily, because that is all you can do, all you can do when your lips are at her mercy and she has never tasted sweeter. But there is something salty there, too—something bitter like tears. 

Your eyes flutter open to catch a glimpse oftwo wet trails streaking down her face. When had she started crying again? How didn’t you notice? 

Without thinking, or maybe you’ve thought about doing this all too much, you snake your hands from her waist and wrap your arms around her. 

You hug her tightly, closing your eyes, because this is something that you _can_ savor. If this is the last moment you’ll ever have with her, you will find a way to keep it locked in your memory. To immortalize it forever. 

To immortalize the way Josie curls her fingers in the hair at the nape of your neck, the way her head slots over your shoulder like the perfect fit, the way you have to lean up in order to make this comfortable for her. 

(And she will wonder why you’re trembling, but you will never know that because she will never ask you.)

“Hope?” she murmurs into your neck, and you imagine that she is clenching her eyes shut as tightly as you are. 

You sigh out a response, something pitiful and strangled at the back of your throat that sounds too much like a whimper and a scream all at once. 

Arms still around your neck, she leans back from the hug and you reluctantly release your hold on her back. Josie tilts her head as she studies your face. 

Her eyes drop to the triangle mark on your neck, the tattoo she had placed there herself. 

And you thought you had disguised it earlier with a spell, but now it is glowing, _preening_ underneath her attention. You wonder, briefly, if she had siphoned the glamour charm away without you noticing.

Josie looks as if she’s going to say something, and you hold your breath for a long time, hoping that she’s going to lean back in and capture your lips with her own once more. She doesn’t. 

She just shakes her head. “Nevermind.” 

You think that stabbing you would have been less effective. You bite your tongue, _bleeding_—trying, struggling not to show it. 

“Josie...” Is this the time to tell her that you’re sorry? Is this the right moment to explain yourself to her? Do you even deserve the chance to try? 

No. You don’t. You don’t deserve anything where it concerns Josie. You don’t deserve to know what her lips taste like, you don’t deserve to know what it is to hug her, and you definitely don’t deserve to be this close to her. 

What happened to staying away from her? It has only been hours since you gave Lizzie your word and you have already broken it. 

“To think I ever liked you...” Whatever Josie had been having a hard time with saying before, it comes out easy now. She adds, voice low and as if it’s more for her than for you, “That’s what I was going to say earlier.” 

Your eyes widen minutely. You can’t believe it. 

She liked you? _Liked_? As in past tense? As in, she liked you before but you had ruined it by jumping her bones whenever you had found yourself alone in a room with her? 

God. 

What have you done? 

You turn away from her, resisting the urge to dig the blunt of your nails into your hairline and scream. You want to scream—you want to feel as though you are ripping your heart out of your chest, as though you are reaching down your throat and tearing yourself apart. 

You massage the flesh of your neck, choking back a sob. You will not cry. You will not subject her to your tears, you will not chase after her sympathy and her comfort and you will never _take_ from her _again_. 

“But,” Josie says, and you twist your body back around quickly, heart stilling dangerously in your chest. When your eyes meet hers, you see that she is looking for something. Her gaze is searching, and when she speaks, she talks very slowly, as if waiting for you to interrupt her at any given pause. “But it’s clear that you don’t have any feelings for me...” 

_How is it clear?_ you want to ask her. Had kissing her not been enough to convince her? 

_How?_ you want to yell. _Does a proclamation of love meaning nothing to you? _

You shake your head, eyebrows furrowed and teeth grinding against one another. No. You can’t blame this one on the potion. This had been all you. She needs to understand that. That—this was _real_. It has always been real. 

“Josie, I...” 

The siphoner cuts you off, so quickly, like she can’t even take the chance of being rejected. “No.” 

Your lips part open unbidden. 

“It’s fine,” she says, tone curt, smoothing out the fabric of her skirt. You dart your eyes away, flushed, as she makes for the door. 

“See you later, Hope.” Your name on her lips sounds dirty. It sounds like it means nothing to her. You hate it. 

“Josie—“ you try to call her back. You imagine that her hand has worked itself into your chest and is squeezing dangerously along the walls of your lungs. You imagine that you are watching yourself talk to her from the outside in, that you are not yourself, that you are someone else, that you are not here, that you have never been here. 

You can’t breathe. You can’t fucking breathe. 

“I’m late for class,” she tells you. 

“Okay,” you say, you let her go, as if—

As if you don’t want her so much it _burns_. 

—

Josie closes the door behind her, but you have the thought that she was gone long before she even left the room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy ending coming soon :)


	22. Chapter 22

Alaric forces you to come into his office later that day, after your last class. In truth, he had been trying to call you in by way of the intercom for most of your classes, but you had just decided to ignore him until now, even when he had sent a teacher to chase after you in the hallways. 

(Well. _Especially_ because he had sent a teacher to chase after you in the hallways.)

You’re avoiding him because you don’t think you’ll be able to look him in the eye. Not after what you’ve done. Not after what you’ve done to his _daughter_. You don’t even think you’ll be able to face him. 

Not like this. 

Not when, just hours ago, you had pressed Josie’s lips against yours—when you _had_ her and then lost her seconds later. Not when, for the past few days, you’ve been chasing after her and desiring her so openly, all for it to turn to utter shit now. 

She must despise you for it. She must hate you for embarrassing and humiliating her.

Not only her. 

_You_. 

You’ve brought shame to yourself. To your family. You can’t even begin to imagine what your family would think if they heard that their miracle Mikaelson heir was bested by a silly love potion. 

Would your aunts stare in disbelief, would your uncles simmer in quiet anger? Would your father be upset? Your mother? Are they watching over you now, wondering how you could be such a disappointment after the grand legacy they left for you? 

Over a thousand years of strength in family, of the _power_ in family—of the power in _always and forever_, a forever that could never last long enough, not nearly long enough for you—and you will never be able to make them proud.

God. How could you have been tempted by a mere potion? You almost can’t believe it. Your family wouldn’t be able to. They would...fuck, they wouldn’t laugh at you for it, they wouldn’t make fun of you for it or condemn your actions, but they should. 

They _should_. 

Standing in front of Alaric’s door now is beyond nerve-wracking. Finding the will to knock is even worse. 

“Come in.” 

You push open the door slowly, hands trembling. It feels like pushing a thousand tons of metal, but even metal can bend. The door seems almost unmoving. 

Alaric doesn’t immediately look up when you enter. Instead, he keeps his eyes on the sheet of paper in front of him, scribbling something in between the margins. 

You don’t say anything, but it’s not like you could if you wanted to. Your throat feels too thick and messy to form a single word. Your lips are practically sewn shut, teeth grinding more restlessly than they ever have before. 

Alaric appears not to notice. He only folds the paper he had been writing on in half and tucks it away in a random drawer of his desk. You don’t move, only standing near the door, simply waiting for him to acknowledge you. 

“Hope.” He stands up from his desk the second he glances up and sees you, a hint of a smile on his lips. He seems almost surprised that you’re here, like he _hasn’t_ been chasing you down the whole day. Maybe he had been expecting someone else? 

“I’m glad to see you’re better,” Alaric says, looking you over pointedly. “Josie told me that she got you to agree to let her siphon from you for the cure.” 

Is that so? 

You laugh bitterly underneath your breath. 

Got you to _agree_? 

Alaric has no clue. No clue at all. 

You wonder if Josie also told him that she had all but seduced you in order to siphon from you for the cure. No. Of course she wouldn’t. The thought is laughable. 

“That’s one way to say it,” you mutter. Alaric tilts his head to the side and eyes you curiously, but you don’t add anything else. He sighs before gesturing to one of the chairs in front of his desk. 

“Sit down.” He takes his own seat, clasping his hands in his lap and taking a deep breath. You don’t make a move to sit yourself, not liking where this is going. “I think we need to have a talk about what happened.”

You take a step back, a scowl flickering at your lips before you can hide it. The lump in your throat comes back full-force. It feels like something is trying to claw its way up and out of your mouth. You hate it. 

“No, thanks.” 

Alaric sighs again. He’s been doing that a lot lately. At least, he’s been doing it a lot lately with you. 

“Would you rather talk with Miss Tig?” he asks. He even goes to reach for his phone, as if intent on calling or sending the therapist a message. “I think she has some sessions lined up right now, but she could probably schedule you in for tomorrow.” 

Fuck. You can’t let that happen. You’ve already wasted everyone’s time enough as it is. You don’t need to use up the school’s resources like this, too. 

“That’s fine,” you hurry to cut in. If your voice cracks, Alaric doesn’t mention it. He only drops his hand back into his lap and furrows his eyebrows. “I don’t need to talk to anyone.” 

“Hope—“ 

“Really, Doctor Saltzman.” The words are too curt and clipped, too rude for you to get away with. You probably won’t. “Listen, I’m—“ 

_He_ interrupts you this time. 

“No, _you_ listen, Hope,” he says, voice stern and rough. It makes you stop from where you had been slowly edging back towards the exit. Your heart stops, too. You don’t notice. 

“You’ve been through some serious trauma lately, and whether you want it or not,” Alaric tells you, “you _are_ going to get help for it.” 

Help? 

No. He has this all wrong. You don’t need help. You need punishment. Discipline. You need someone to hurt you for what you’ve done, you need someone to hurt you as badly as you’ve hurt others—as you’ve hurt _Josie_—you need someone to make sure you won’t get away with what happened. 

God. 

How can he even say that you need help? Like...like you’re a _victim_, or something? No. You won’t stand for this. His daughter should be the one getting help. You are not deserving of help. Josie is. Definitely not you. 

You should be tortured for what you did to Josie. You—

You should be killed for what you did to her. 

What you allowed yourself to do to her. How can Alaric not see that? 

How can he...? 

It’s fine. You’ll make him. You’ll make him understand that you’re a disgusting monster and he should kill you where you stand. He should peel your skin layer by layer and rip your heart out with his bare hands. He should make you feel as awful as you made Josie feel. 

The siphoner’s face flashes behind your eyes, unbidden. You turn the image over in your head until it burns an imprint into your memories:

Her face, flushed with color yet undeniably pale, eyebrows drawn together, lips pressed into a pout, full and plump, eyes burning dark as she watches you disappoint her over and over and _over_ again— 

It takes everything inside of you not to leave immediately and make for the nearest trash can. You feel sick to your stomach, insides twisting and coiling like a snake. Disgust with yourself and what you did to Josie rises like bile in your throat. 

Suddenly, you want nothing more than for Alaric to realize that you are not the one he should be comforting. You want nothing more than for him to know the truth. 

A slow smile worms its way onto your face. 

“_Aww_,” you drag the word out, tone patronizing and sugary-sweet. Alaric seems startled by the sudden change. Just a moment ago, you had been blank and emotionless. But this change is not your wolf. This one is you. “You think I need help?” 

You raise a mocking eyebrow. “That I even deserve it?” 

Alaric opens his mouth and closes it several times. 

“Do you even know what I’ve done?” you continue, leaning forward with a deadly look in your eye. The smile stays the same. 

Alaric blinks, frowning. “I...” 

He trails off, but the words don’t seem to come. 

“No, right?” Alaric doesn’t meet your eyes. You need him to. You need him to see the part of you pleading for him to get this—to understand without you saying it outright. “You don’t.” 

“I mean,” you drawl lazily, but your heart is pounding. His human ears are too weak to hear it. “I’m sure you’ve read all about it. From Jean’s diary. From Fentere’s book...” 

Alaric looks at you suddenly. But he doesn’t look angry. Just sad. Like he pities you, or something. You fucking hate it. _He_ should hate it. He should hate _you_. 

You have to make him hate you. 

“That would mean you know what would have aggravated my little problem, right?” The words curl lightly around your tongue, something between playful and cruel. A look of confusion flashes across Alaric’s face, but he knows well enough to mask it. 

“Hmm,” you hum, voice still low and dangerous, but not exactly threatening. “I think Dorian’s exact words were...” 

Your conversation with Dorian a few days ago flies to the forefront of your mind. You can distinctly remember him telling you that the potion’s effects were worse for you because of your feelings for Josie. 

Fuck. You realize that it’s Monday today. 

Monday. 

Today. 

Dorian had told you that night that he would inform the rest of the class on Monday—_today_, God—that desiderio potum doesn’t actually replicate love, just emboldens it. 

That means that Josie will know soon that you have feelings for her. Maybe she’ll even realize that...

Fuck. Maybe she’ll even realize that you’re in love with her. 

Okay. No need to panic. Maybe Josie won’t attend the class and you won’t have a thing to worry about? Yes. It doesn’t matter that Josie is studious and cares about her education like you care about finishing all the seasons of Cutthroat Kitchen. It doesn’t matter that she has a perfect attendance record. She’ll ditch the class. No worries. 

“‘Most did not display violent tendencies unless they were enamored with another,’” you quote Dorian’s words, after a long moment of silence. You wonder if Alaric noticed why it had taken you so long to speak. You wonder if the man notices anything _at all_ nowadays. 

“I...” The man’s words fall away. He blinks fast, eyes darting around the room and landing on you. He still doesn’t understand. “What do you mean?” 

You almost want to grab his shoulders and shake him out of his stupidity. Isn’t it obvious? 

But it’s not. 

Your love for Josie has never been obvious. 

You kept it hidden to yourself, and for as long as you have had feelings for Josie, you have also denied it to yourself for just as long. She has always been unattainable to you, a forbidden desire you felt you had to keep secret. 

“Oh.” You feign surprise. “Dorian didn’t tell you?” 

Alaric doesn’t seem to like your tone very much. His eyes narrow and harden into dark pools of steel. 

“Dorian didn’t tell me what?” 

You pause, if only for dramatic effect. 

“About my...” The uplilt to your voice grates on your own nerves. It must be doing wonders to Alaric’s. “Itsy...bitsy...crush.” 

He swallows hard. The sound of it almost gives you pause. Almost. 

“On your precious, sweet daughter,” you continue, because you can’t stop now. You can’t fucking stop. Not until he resents you. Not until he hates you so much that he either sends you out of this God-forsaken school or kills you. Or both. 

“_Josie_.” 

Surprise widens Alaric’s eyes and parts his lips thinly. He leans away, looking completely taken aback. There is something else there, too, something deeper still like clarity. Like understanding. 

“So pretty and smart.” Your smile turns into a small smirk. Alaric’s nose flares angrily. “Probably smarter than you. Definitely prettier, no offense.” 

“And she smells...” You inhale deeply, the phantom scent of vanilla and cinnamon distracting you. For just a second. You snap out of it quickly. “Amazing.” 

On his desk, Alaric’s fist tightens into a ball. His knuckles are white, face blotting with red and purple as he keeps his eyes forward and off of you. Good. It’s working.

“She tastes amazing, too,” you add. His eyes suddenly snap to yours and he looks almost...afraid. No, that’s not quite right. He looks downright furious and boiling, but there is also something like dread and betrayal written clear across his face. 

He is scared of what you’ll say next.

“Hope...” he starts slowly in warning, the vein on his forehead bulging. 

“Oh, yeah,” you cut him off, with an air of nonchalance, as if he had never spoken at all. “I’ve tasted her everywhere. _Had_ her everywhere. The supply closet on the first floor. The bathroom down the hall. My room. Twice. I _ruined_ her.” 

You pause and look around, almost appraisingly. “I probably could have had her in this office too if—“

“Shut up,” Alaric snaps, finally. He stands up so suddenly that it sends his desk chair falling behind him. The wheels of it scrape across the floor with a harsh, rasping sound that makes you tense.

But you can’t show weakness, now. You force your body to relax, force your aching muscles to ease, your pounding heart to slow. 

You pretend that you aren’t affected at all. In truth, you are screaming on the inside. Shaking. Stuck somewhere between begging for his forgiveness and admitting that you and Josie only kissed, nothing more. 

(Nothing more.) 

But it’ll be better if he thinks you did more. If he thinks that you..._hurt_ her. It’ll be better if he thinks that this is how you repaid him for all the things he has done for you. That this is how you thanked him for taking you in like a father after your own died. 

“Why don’t you make me, huh, Ric?” You raise your eyebrows tauntingly, striding forward to the left side of his desk, where you know he keeps a dagger hidden. 

You swipe your hand against the underside of the desk, moving along the splinters and cracks of the old wood until you feel something sharp and smooth beneath the pads of your fingers. 

You rip the dagger out from its hiding place and thrust it towards him without delay, so that the tip of the knife is pointing at you and the hilt is pressing into his chest. 

Take it, you want to scream. Kill me. 

Alaric doesn’t take the dagger, but he doesn’t push it away from him either. He seems stuck, eyes searching yours almost pleadingly. The bush of his brows are knitted together in frustration and indecision, the set of his spine and shoulder blades rigid and taut. 

He clearly doesn’t know what to do. 

Whatever. If he needs more, then you’ll give him more. 

“You know you want to hurt me,” you say, teeth clenched and bared all at once. “_You know you want to_. My father’s death wasn’t enough for you. He tormented your family for years. Your friends. He might have died but your suffering lives on. Kill me, and then when I come back, kill me again.” 

Your fingers quiver around the dagger, curling around it so tightly that you begin to bleed where the sharp edges dig into your skin. You don’t flinch, but you embrace the pain, instead. Blood begins to drip onto the table between you two. 

After a long moment, Alaric shakes his head and steps back. The dagger drops to the desk, thudding dully against the wood. This time, you do flinch at the sound. 

“Fine,” you growl out, wiping the blood on your hand off on your skirt. You lean forward, so that your fingers wrap around the edge of the desk. “Don’t kill me. Send me away instead. You can do that, right? You can expel me, or you banish me to your homey, little prison world you don’t think anyone knows—“ 

“Hey,” Alaric interrupts, frowning. “How did you find out about that?” 

He shakes his head to himself when you don’t respond. “Nevermind...” 

“Did you really do all that?” he speaks up, raising his voice above the whisper it had been seconds ago. He sounds timid. Nervous. “To my—to Josie?” 

Josie. Innocent, dear Josie. God. How could you have done anything to her? How could you lie about what you did with her? Her father will never look at her the same way. 

But...

It’s easier like this. If he thinks you assaulted Josie and hurt her. And maybe you even did. You still don’t have all your memories of your time together back. You only have little parts and fragments. All you know is that you took advantage of her. 

“Yes,” you say, finally, lungs burning.

Alaric gives you one last, scathing look before shoving the right drawer of his desk open and pulling out the magical lie detector orb he keeps in there. 

It’s glowing bright red. 

Now he knows that you’re lying. 

“Do you think I’m stupid, Hope?” If it’s possible, Alaric looks angrier than he had before. He slams the orb on the desk, eyes glaring into yours, just as glowing, just as bright, just as red. “If you want someone to punish you for what happened, look somewhere else, because it won’t be me. Tomorrow, you’re going to have a talk with Emma and that’s final. Now get out, and don’t do anything stupid.” 

You turn on your heel and leave without another word. 

When you slam the door behind you, it feels like a dam breaking. You don’t realize it right away, but you’re crying. You have been for minutes, but you never noticed it until now. 

Never noticed it until your vision started to blur from all the tears building up, never noticed it until a sob released itself from your throatand made itself known. 

The tears fall freely now, streaming down your face in wet trails and falling to the floor. It feels like you are drowning, like you are six feet underwater and can’t break the surface, like no matter how much you swim, you haven’t moved an inch. 

Your tears have dried out by the time you reach your dorm room. You wipe angrily at your face as you unlock your door, kicking it shut behind you. 

You lean against the door and struggle to catch your breath. The distance from Alaric’s office to your room had felt like that of a million miles. 

Damn it. You take a willful breath and try to ignore the deep shudders racking throughout your entire body. Your chest heaves for air, but it doesn’t seem to be enough to calm your racing heart. 

“Hope?” 

You crack an eye open, freezing at the sight before you. Where you had not been able to stop your body from shaking earlier, it is completely still, now. 

And—

Of course, it’s Josie. _Of_ fucking _course_. 

Who else would it be? Who else would it be, sitting on your bed like she had done so many weeks ago, that first night? 

She’s still in her school uniform, you notice. She had probably come here right after her last class, but you have no idea why she’s sitting in the dark. Maybe she had planned to surprise you? Ambush you so you would have no way to prepare and deny your feelings for her? 

She must know that you like her. She must. If Dorian is a man of his word, then your entire class probably understands now that desiderio potum is not a true love potion. 

(Perhaps it should have been labeled a truth serum, instead.) 

Fucking Dorian. 

“What are you doing here?” you ask, panic clear in your voice. You’re talking too fast, you know, but you can’t stop. “Why are you..?”

Josie stares back at you and says nothing, biting her bottom lip and pulling it in her mouth. She tilts her head to the side and releases it with a small pop. Her lips look so, so swollen, you think she must have been biting them all day. 

God. 

She has no idea that just minutes ago, in a moment of weakness, you had begged her father to kill you. 

You clear your throat uselessly. “Why are you sitting in the dark? You should—“ 

You cut yourself off again. This time, you don’t make the mistake of trying to clear your throat. You know it won’t help. 

“I’ll go,” you tell her, not meeting her eyes. You’re afraid you might crumble to dust right in front of her if you do. “I’ll stay away, don’t worry.” 

You turn around to face the door, a soft mantra of _stay away, stay away, stay away_ repeating in your head. Josie’s soft voice stops you from leaving. 

“Hope,” she says, swinging her legs over your bed and standing up. “This is your room.” 

“_Oh_,” you breathe, head spinning. You’re a fucking idiot. “Right.”

You let go of the door knob, but you make sure to stay as close to the exit as you possibly can. As far away from _her_ as you possibly can. 

Her backpack is at the foot of your bed, and she bends down to pick it up. She holds it in front of herself and zips the bag open quickly, stuffing her hand down into it and pulling out a purple, glittery folder. 

You raise a single eyebrow at that. 

Josie then drops her bag back to the floor and walks over to you, holding the folder out. She seems a lot less upset at you than she was earlier. She even looks...shy. 

“I came here to give you your notes,” she tells you, a slight rosy blush to her cheeks. She keeps her chin to her chest and eyes to the floor as she hands you the stack of papers inside the folder, adding in a much quieter voice, “From class.” 

_Does she know?_ you wonder. _Did Dorian tell her? _

You can’t tell. 

“Thank you,” you say hesitantly, dropping your own gaze to the papers to stop yourself from accidentally looking at her. You’re afraid that she’ll be able to take one look at you and see right through you. 

“How’s the project going?” you ask, if only to be polite. 

The words _without me _ring loudly in the silence that follows. It is near deadly. 

A few seconds go by where Josie seems to think over her answer. The muscles of your back become stiff and tense as you watch carefully for her reaction. She doesn’t give you much of one. 

God. You can’t fucking tell if she _knows_. 

“Good,” she says, at last. Her voice is even, almost casual. It scares you. “Dorian kind of put it on hold for the past few days, but he’s still teaching us about the potion and stuff.” 

Your eyes snap to hers and for a second, you swear you can feel your blood thicken to ice beneath your skin. If you shiver, you’ll blame it on the weather later. 

“Actually, uh,” Josie continues hesitantly, “he mentioned some interesting things today.” 

You part your lips with a shaky exhale. 

“Yeah?” 

Josie nods with several nervous, uneasy jerks of her head.She stammers over her words. “He, he said, he said that—“ 

She sighs quietly, unable to bring herself to say it out loud. She pinches the bridge of her nose, obviously frustrated. 

“Here,” the siphoner mutters, pointing at the first paper on top of the stack in your hand. “You can see for yourself.” 

Fuck. 

She knows. 

She _definitely_ knows. 

Heart in throat, you glance down to the white sheet in your hand, reading the title. 

** 10 Common Myths of Desiderio Potum **

Oh, God. 

Unable to go on any further, and with fear clamping down on your every nerve, you slowly lift your eyes back to Josie, who is staring right back at you with a look you can’t quite interpret. 

“Josie,” you say, voice soft, face screwed up in a grimace, but you don’t know where you’re going with this. An apology is the clear option, but you have a feeling that your sorry’s no longer mean anything to her. “I...”

“Read it,” Josie cuts you off, before you can even try to explain yourself. Her voice is sharp like glass, but still like stone all the same. You hold her gaze for a long moment before listening. 

You glance away, back down to the notepaper, and if her eyes stay on you, you don’t dare stare back. Your fingers curl around the edges of the paper so tight that they grow numb, and you have still lost feeling in them minutes after yourelease it. 

Silently, you read the first sentence underneath the title. It’s hard to concentrate on the words, but you manage. 

** #1: Desiderio potum cannot create love. It only amplifies pre-existing feelings and forces the user to act on them.  **

You gulp thickly, a shaky hand running over your neck as your throat bobs with the intensity of it. Something heavy and hot burns there, something that is not just the lump in your throat, but the triangle mark on your pulse point. 

It thunders in time with your racing heart and you feel your breathing pick up all the same—so, so fast that you think you might pass out.

You release a shuddering breath that feels more like a whimper than the exhale it is supposed to be. When the air leaves your lungs, all the strength in your body seems to go with it. 

Damn it. How are you supposed to even look her in the eye now? You are not a foot away from her but it feels like there are miles between you two. How can you even try to bridge the distance? 

Your shoulders deflate and you shut your eyes slowly, willing yourself to do something, to say something, to say _anything_, but it seems impossible. 

A long moment of silence passes and then drags on. Josie breaks it. 

“You knew.” She sounds breathless. Disappointed. Angry. Your stomach twists in a mix of shame and guilt. 

“How long?” she asks, in a whisper, suddenly much closer to you than she had been before. Her scent is muted now, but consuming all the same, and you can’t help inhaling it like an addict on cocaine. Fuck. 

“A few days,” you tell her, just as quietly. She brings her hand to her face and rubs at her eyes tiredly, like she can’t quite believe that you let her think you didn’t have feelings for her after you kissed in the bathroom. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I...” You meet her gaze for the first time in minutes, almost pleading. Desperate. “What did you expect me to do?” 

You can’t hold eye-contact for more than a few seconds and move to pass her, so that your shoulders brush for just a moment and she now stands behind you. With your back facing her, it feels much easier to breathe. 

“Acknowledge the fact that I was in control, that I was at fault for everything I did to you?” 

You pace around the room and begin to busy yourself, trying to distract yourself from whatever happens next, trying to distract yourself from whatever _this_ is. 

“That it wasn’t the potion as much as _me_? That the truth is, I wasn’t underneath the influence of a potion, but that—“ You move to your desk, placing the sheets of paper down in a stack and organizing random, little things. You reach for a pencil holder and your clumsy fingers knock it over. Everything inside of it spills all over your desk. You clench your fists and whirl around, chest heaving. “That I’m just a _monster_?”

Oh, God. Your hands are shaking. The room is spinning. Your legs are trembling. Everything is fucking— 

“You’re not a monster.” Josie steps forward, voice soft but it feels like she is screaming at you. Everything is screaming. You can’t get the world around you to calm down. You just need a second of peace. Just a fucking second. “The potion made you act that way, and deep down, I think you know that.” 

You shake your head. You know nothing but the fact that everything is your fault. How could you do this? How could you...?

“If you need someone to convince you,” the siphoner says, still stepping forward. You take a step back in response, and your lower back hits the edge of the desk. “Then, fine.” 

“It’s not your fault what happened,” she tells you, eyes kind and open. They search yours, begging you to understand, begging to convince you. “No one blames you. You don’t need to feel like you have to blame yourself. You’re not as evil as everyone makes you out to be. As you try to make yourself out to be.” 

It all falls onto deaf ears. 

Josie continues to step into your personal space, but now you have nowhere left to go. Unless you move around her again. You might do that. 

“What’s wrong in admitting that?” she asks, eyebrows knitted almost angrily. Like she’s angry for you. “What’s so wrong in admitting that you were a victim of the potion just as much as I was? What’s so wrong—“ 

She stops herself short, lowering her voice. You almost don’t hear what comes next. “What’s so wrong in admitting that you had feelings for me?” 

She sounds hurt. You part your lips, but no sounds come out. Until, everything does. 

“I was scared that you wouldn’t return them,” you admit. You have always been too weak to stand your ground against her. “I was scared that you were just afraid of me, or that you just pitied me, and that’s why you were going along with all of this and why you kept helping me out.” 

Josie looks taken aback by that. Disbelieving. She stares at you incredulously, like everything you just said was completely wrong or something. When she doesn’t respond, you know it wasn’t. 

“I...” God. What is there left to say? 

You finally find the strength to turn away from her and that is exactly what you do. You step away and return to the front of your room, walking back and forth and struggling with how to explain to her that this is not what she wants. She does not want you. She never will. 

The sooner she understands that, the better. 

You stop walking as she turns back around slowly, looking beyond confused, to face you. You can’t take it, and you turn around so her back is to you. She doesn’t seem to like that very much, and she moves again so that she stands between you and the door. There goes your escape plan. 

“This doesn’t have to mean anything,” you tell her, resisting the sudden urge to run your hands through your hair and pull yourself apart. You want to yank out your hair, you want to destroy every piece and part of yourself, you want to feel as though you are ruining everything inside of you. “We can go back to the way things were. We can—“ 

No. Stop. Please, _stop_. 

“We can forget the past few weeks ever happened,” you finish, and while you have always been weak for Josie, you are strong for her, now. 

The words hang in the air like an offer. It silently destroys you to think that Josie has to actually think about it, in a way that Alaric having to think about killing you never did. 

She seems to study you for a beat, trying to see if you are telling the truth, trying to see if this is what you _truly_ want. And then—

“No, I can’t,” the other girl says finally, _and neither can I_, you think. “We can never go back.” 

She steps forward again, determined. You dodge her eyes. 

“Why not?” She is closer now, leaving you with no choice but to try to breathe through your mouth, so that you can even _attempt_ to think without her intoxicating scent pervading and influencing your every sense and being. 

“It’s impossible.”

You shake your head, in part to deny it and in part to clear your head of her scent. You can’t get it out, no matter how much you breathe through your mouth. Why are you even trying? 

“I won’t tell anyone what happened,” you promise, but you are not convincing and she is not won over by your words in the slightest. “You’re free to do whatever you want with anyone else, I swear.” 

She shakes her head resolutely, not willing to accept you giving up like this. “No. Everyone already knows. And—“ 

Quietly, she adds, “And I don’t want anyone else.” 

Your breath catches in your throat. “_Josie_.” 

It sounds like a warning as her eyes set on yours with all the warmth of a blazing fire. She does not heed it, and you do not burn. 

“_Hope_.” 

Fuck. 

You need to push her away. Before she gets too close. Then you won’t be able to hold out against her. You won’t be able to resist her. 

“You’re not understanding me.” You rub an anxious hand at the back of your neck, nails digging into the small curls there. “There can’t be anything between us. I’m...not the person you’ve made up in your mind. I’m not the person you might think I am.” 

Josie seems to get really mad at you saying that. Her eyes narrow and she steps forward again, intent on proving you wrong. Her mouth opens, but you beat her there.

“Can you honestly say you know anything about me?” 

She closes her mouth. 

“_One_ thing?” 

And it’s true. You were strangers before this happened. The only connection you two ever made was your lips on hers. Even if you had always wanted more. 

“Even my favorite color?” you continue, but she has still no answer. A part of you had been hoping differently. 

Josie looks down to the floor. This time, she dodges you. 

“I’ll admit, these past few weeks have been both a dream and a nightmare,” you say, hands at your sides now. They itch to reach out and pull her close. But she is already far too close, and you are already far too gone. “I let myself imagine that we had a future, but that’s simply not true. I...deluded myself into thinking we could be a possibility, but the truth is, we wouldn’t work. Not in any universe, and certainly not in this one.” 

Josie snaps her head up, eyes wet. She looks a second away from crying, but she also looks mad. Upset. She wipes at her eyes angrily. “How can you say that?” 

_ Push her away. Don’t let her in. Make her hate you.  _

“It’s easy, actually.” You shrug. “Can’t you see? We’ve never talked once outside of this damn potion. I bet you’ve never even thought twice about me before this all happened.”

The siphoner looks like she wants to argue, but you go on. 

“You don’t know me, and you don’t want to.” You sound sad, even to your own ears. That is not your intention. You want to sound casual. A little angry, too. “At least, not the real me.” 

She still looks confused. Why can’t she get it? Why is it taking her so fucking long to hate you? It had been so easy for her before this. So, so easy. Her sister bullied you for years. Josie had never outright said anything cruel, always the more quiet one about it, but she had been just as complicit. 

“That’s not true,” she says, but her voice is too small, and you pretend not to hear her. She only raises it. 

“Please, Hope.” She reaches out, before thinking better of it and dropping her hands to her sides. “I already said this wasn’t your fault.You don’t have to blame yourself. You don’t have to push me away. Can we please at least try to—“ 

“You know what?” you interrupt, voice deceptively uncaring. Josie tilts her to the side, curious. You narrow your eyes thoughtfully. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe this isn’t my fault.” 

Push her away. 

“Maybe it’s _yours_.” 

Josie lets out a wet, humorless laugh. 

“Oh,” she scoffs, moving towards you, so that you stand eye-to-eye and nose-to-nose. “You’re really blaming me for this now?” 

“Yup.” You curl a corner of your lips into something between a snarl and a sneer. “None of this would have happened had you just left well enough alone. No one asked you to feel bad for me and follow me around and throw yourself at me like some _desperate_, little—“

“Don’t even finish that sentence,” Josie growls out, looking about a minute away from slapping you. Good. Maybe if she does, she’ll realize how much she should hate you. Maybe if she gets really, really mad, she’ll finally leave you alone. 

“The point is,” you bite back, through a set of teeth clenched in despair, in anguish. Why are you two fighting, again? It suddenly seems so hard to remember. Oh, right. You need her to leave. “No one asked you to do any of this.”

She is so, so close now. If you move a few inches forward, you would be touching. You want that so bad. Memories of your time together begin to tear through your head: of her body pressing into yours as firmly as her lips, her tantalizing scent, the feeling of her hands on you. God. The feeling of her hands on you. You struggle to deny that you long to feel them again. To feel her hands, her lips, her _everything_. 

“Well,” Josie says, just as angry as you, eyes dark and deadly beneath her long, pretty lashes. “I’m pretty sure no one asked you to get yourself dosed by a love potion and chase after me like some _horny_, little boy. I’m pretty sure no one asked you to _kiss_ me—“

“Oh, yeah?” you cut her off angrily, moving even closer so that your nose is not an inch from her own. So your _lips_ are not an inch from her own. “Well, _I’m_ pretty sure I’m about to do it again!” 

“Then do it!” 

“_Fine_!” 

In the next second, her back is slamming against the door, and your lips are pinning her there. 


	23. Chapter 23

You tell yourself that this is the last time. 

The last time. 

This is why you kiss her, why you allow yourself to have her, for just a moment more. 

You tell yourself this when you trap Josie against the door, both hands on either side of her, palms pressed into the wood. When you move closer still, so that her hips mold into yours, so that your fronts brush with every shaking breath. And then once more, when you tilt your head to the side and take her lips with your own over and over, her mouth so softagainst yours and just as warm. 

You tell yourself this again when Josie whispers against your lips, “This isn’t the potion, right?” And you tell yourself and tell yourself and _tell yourself_ when you choose not to answer. 

Funny, you think, that you and Josie had just been arguing mere seconds ago, and now it feels as though you are both melting into each other. 

The fact that she is letting you do all this, any of this, surprises you. The fact that she kisses you back so fervently burns like heat in your chest. The fact that—

The fact that she will never be completely yours destroys you. 

And you will never be able to watch her be happy with someone else. A small part of you, hidden deep inside your mind, buried all the same in your heart, has the thought that maybe you won’t have to watch her be with someone else. Maybe you’ll already be gone by then. 

You’re older than her. It won’t be long before you leave this god-forsaken school, and everyone in it. It won’t be long before you leave Josie. 

But for now, you have _this_. 

You have her hands cupping your face, sliding down your neck to rest on your shoulders. You have the warmth of her body pressing into yours. You have her. Almost. 

“Put your hands on me.” The request is breathless and pleading, murmured in the second your lips leave Josie’s as she pulls away to catch her breath. Her chest heaves and knocks into yours, mouth releasing these hot, little puffs of air that scorch the skin of your face like fire. 

You almost forget that the other girl had just said something, but you blink in surprise when her words finally register. 

You shake your head in response and keep your fingers digging into the wood of the door, starting a trail of kisses along her jaw, lips unwilling to part with the skin beneath it. 

No. You won’t lay a hand on her. You won’t hurt her. 

The last time, you remind yourself. 

Just a few days ago, you had tried to bite her, you had tried to sink your teeth into the crook of her neck and leave a mark to claim her as yours. 

This time, you make sure to keep your canines in check, you make sure to keep the tell-tale gold out of your vision. Not again. Never again. Instead, you skip over her neck to attach your mouth to her collarbone.

A small moan leaves her own mouth that burns in your ears and stings underneath your skin like a branding iron. She sounds so fucking hot. So fucking—

_Perfect_.

Desire boils low and hot in your abdomen, and you just barely resist the urge to drag your tongue in a long line up her throat and dig your teeth into the sweetest part you can find. 

But you don’t, because you’re no longer under the effects of the potion, and that would be...inappropriate. 

You just wouldn’t have a good excuse. You—

Well. You don’t even know why you want to do it. _Bite her_, that is. Things had been easier to understand when your wolf was a bigger part of you. With your wolf exiled to the back of your mind, it’s harder to know why you want what you want. 

“Please.” 

Your fingers clench into the door at the plea and Josie shudders against you at the sound of your nails scraping against the wood and tearing into it like it’s nothing. Whether it scares her or does something else, you don’t know. 

Fuck. 

You take a deep breath and loosen your grip, eyes clenched shut and muscles tensed in fear. Don’t hurt her. Don’t hurt her. _Don’t_—

“I don’t want to hurt you,” you say, jaw trembling with the force it takes to hold yourself back. 

There’s a pause, then, where Josie seems to suck in a ragged breath and then she seems to stop breathing altogether, before it passes.

Her hands separate from where they had been clutching desperately at your shoulders, one lowering to stroke at your forearm and the other trailing up to lift your chin, forcing you to look her in the eye. 

“It’s okay,” she says, voice soft and quiet, and so, very understanding. You blink in a heavy-lidded daze, mind foggy and unable to grasp that she is here in front of you, and you have never felt closer, have never felt farther all at once. “I trust you.” 

She crashes your lips back together, less angry and heated than the first time but still needy and desperate. She is not just against your mouth, but in your skin, in your blood, in your bones and in every aching muscle and nerve. 

It makes your hands shake against the door, tightening into fists that are too scared to touch and bruise and hurt. They only stop shaking a minute later, when Josie pulls at your bottom lip with her teeth and slowly slips her fingers between your knuckles and the door. 

A pathetic whimper escapes your mouth as you struggle against her, fighting to keep your hands clenched and hidden away. But you have always been too weak for her, and Josie manages to unfurl your fists and relax your fingers. 

She hums happily in the back of her throat at her success, intertwining your hands with her own and letting you pin them both against the door with a dull thud. 

The act of submission has your heart pounding desperately in your chest, and you don’t think before dipping your head down and lowering your lips to the column of her neck. You’re still not thinking a moment later when you choose to suck at the skin of her pulse point. 

_Hard_. 

Josie lets out a sound that half-resembles a broken moan of your name, pushing herself back against the door with her head tilted to the side, almost as if she’s offering you more space to work with. You swipe the tip of your tongue at the spot to sooth the bite, a quiet apology on your lips that gets cut off when her hips jump up into your own and buck forward. You slam them back into the wood with your own and keep them pinned there, even as she thrashes and writhes against you. 

God. Does she know what she’s doing to you? It won’t be long before you pass out from just the sounds she’s making, you think. 

You squeeze her fingers with your own, pressing another greedy kiss under her jaw, and then one more and after that a third, until it turns into a dozen of them—a dozen kisses, a dozen apologies, a dozen promises to never hurt her again. 

There is a part of you that knows that you can never keep this promise, and you wait for the moment that you break it, for the moment that your wolf takes over again and ruins everything. 

Surely, it’ll happen, right? 

You pause, lips a hair’s breadth away from Josie’s skin, hovering over that same spot on her neck that you’ve focused on so many times before. That you’ve wanted to dig your teeth into so many times before. 

You wait for the urge to pass.

Waiting, waiting, waiting...

It never even comes. 

A sigh gets caught in your throat. It feels a lot like relief. 

Josie must feel it, too, because she pulls away from you, chest heaving with every rise and fall of the air in her lungs. You wonder if she knows what you had been thinking just seconds ago. 

“Wow...” the siphoner starts, but her words seem to fall away as she trails off, unsure of what to say. Her breathing slowly evens out, and you find your own words in the space between. 

“It isn’t,” you tell her, mind reeling and far, far too gone. Far too gone for her. You can’t believe that this is happening. That any of this happened at all. 

“Wha—?” Josie uses your joined hands to push you off of her, eyes dark and clouded over. She rubs at the damp, hot skin of her neck as you stumble backwards, just a step. Just enough for you to be able to breathe. When the siphoner finally speaks, she still sounds a little disorientated. “What?” 

“This isn’t just the potion,” you say, heart in your throat, racing at your pulse, at the triangle mark just above. Your eyes meet hers desperately. “I...” 

You step forward, but she places a hand on your chest in warning. 

“_Hope_.” 

Does she know? Does she know that you are two words away from professing your love to her? She must. She must. 

“No.” You shake your head resolutely. A sob forms in your throat. You swallow it down. “Let me say this.” 

Josie leans back and presses herself against the door, and if you catch the way her knees wobble, you don’t mention it. If she catches the way your eyes flash yellow, she doesn’t mention it, either. 

“I’ve had feelings for you for a while now,” you tell her, stepping closer, but Josie doesn’t move back. She has nowhere left to go. “I never said anything because I had heard a rumor that you were..._talking_...to Penelope Park.” 

Josie’s throat bobs. Bile rises in your own.

“The potion.” Desiderio potum. “It brought my feelings to the surface, and for the first time I felt like we had a chance. I used it as an excuse to be with you.” 

Your eyes lower to the ground. You can’t quite look at her for what comes next. “The potion made it easier. I was finally able to say and do the things I had wanted to do for so long. I could pretend that I wasn’t at fault for my actions. It made me feel better about—“

_ Loving you.  _

“—Everything I did, so it gave me even more reason to keep doing it.” You flit your gaze back to Josie’s, but she isn’t quite looking at you either. Having no where else to go, you glance back to the floor. “I’m so sorry.” 

A rough beat of silence and insecurity passes. It feels like your heart is being ripped out, until it’s not. 

“I’m sorry, too,” Josie blurts out, causing your eyes to snap back to hers. “Honestly, I—well, I felt like I was taking advantage of you. I just, I wanted you any way you would let me have you. Even if that wasn’t the way I truly wanted.” 

“_Josie_.” Is it you that is her warning her now? You try to breathe but the air gets caught in your throat. You realize that you haven’t been breathing for a while, now. You can’t remember when you stopped. You can’t remember how to start again.

“When you kissed me that first time,” the siphoner continues, “I didn’t know what to do with myself. Part of me hoped that it would never end, but then I saw—“ 

She sucks in a breath, eyes dropping to your neck. To the black triangle there. “Then I saw the _mark_, and I knew I couldn’t let anything else happen.” 

Her hand trails up from your chest, fingertips ghosting along the edges of the mark on your neck, leaving phantom bumps in their wake. At the first brush of her skin against yours, the mark flares dark red. A shiver runs down your spine and burns all around. 

This feels..._intimate_. You don’t know if you can stand a second longer of it. Maybe it’s for the best that Josie drops her hand a moment later. Maybe it’s even better that she stays close to you and doesn’t move away. 

“I assumed that you were only seeking me out because of the potion,” she says, “so I spent the rest of the week avoiding you. I tried to keep away and make myself busy, but it was hard. It became easier with...” 

Her eyes go impossible darker. 

“...With Penelope,” Josie finishes. You bite your tongue, if only to stop the vomit shooting up your throat. Josie doesn’t seem to notice. “You were rough with me, but she was always so kind and gentle. She held my hand and never left any bruises.” 

You blink and turn your head over your shoulder, in a poor attempt to hide the way your bottom lip trembles. To hide your jealousy. Your guilt. It doesn’t work. 

(Did you really think it would?)

“For some reason, it wasn’t—“ Josie stops herself short, swallowing down the thick lump in her throat like it’s painful or something. Her voice turns into a soft whisper. “_She_ wasn’t enough. When she finally broke up with me, I was relieved. I think a part of her knew that what I felt for her was nothing compared to what I felt for you.”

A burst of hope pounds as deep within your chest as your traitorous, unforgiving heart. Perhaps it is not so unforgiving. To think, just a second ago, you had been jealous. 

The guilt remains. It’s more than you think you can bear. 

“I tried to ignore my feelings so I could help you, help you the way that you _needed_, but deep down, I knew it was just an excuse to get closer to you.” A cool nose travels down your jawline, skimming over your neck and finding purchase at your pulse point. You almost gasp in surprise, but you have just enough restraint to stop the sound from coming out. 

“At one point,” Josie says, breath coming hot and shallow against the flesh of your throat. She hovers over the triangle mark on your neck for a long second, and then two, before pressing her lips down. You let out a quiet groan, unbidden, and then another one when her lips draw back. “I stopped caring about pretending. When you woke up in my room the night of the full moon, I realized that you had forgotten most of what happened that day. Then, later, when you lured me into the cell, I told myself you wouldn’t remember anything anyway, so I just let you take what you wanted.” 

Oh, God. 

What did you do to her?

You try to remember, but your memory is foggy and you are left with blank spaces more often than not. Before this, you were sure you hadn’t done anything past kissing her. 

You didn’t. Right? 

“Jo—“ 

“What your _wolf_ wanted, I mean,” the siphoner hurries to correct herself, picking her head up from your neck and looking at you with wide, panicked eyes. “It said some..._things_, and for the first time I started to have hope that my feelings weren’t just one sided.” 

Your breath catches. You turn away from her again, because you don’t want her to see how right she is. It’s no use. 

“And now that you know they aren’t?” you ask slowly, stiffly, dreading the answer. The words cut on the way up, and leave you in agony of hearing more. 

Josie doesn’t give you anything right away, only shaking her head with a small, sad smile as she brushes past you. You turn your body around to watch her pace the room, back and forth, again and again, on repeat. 

“I wanted to come and find you right after Dorian’s class,” she says, out of nowhere, changing the subject, “but I knew I couldn’t. So, I waited. I’ve been _waiting_ the entire day.” 

She glances down to the floor and hugs herself, wrapping her fingers underneath her elbows. She looks so small. “_Thinking_ the entire day.” 

She stops next to your bed and sits down at the edge of it. You can’t quite tear your eyes away as she takes a deep breath and plays with her hands in her lap. She seems...sad. 

“I’ve been thinking, too,” you tell her, in a poor, foolish attempt to reassure the other girl. To reassure yourself. Sighing, you walk over and sit down next to her. 

“Thinking?” 

Josie scrunches up her eyebrows. It’s adorable. You almost reach out to her, you almost grab her hand in yours, you almost press your fingers to the crinkle between her eyebrows, you almost kiss her. But if you do, you don’t think you’ll ever be able to stop, and then what? 

“About you and me,” you say, all in one breath, heart thundering in your chest. If you don’t get it out quickly, you don’t think you’ll ever be able to. Not with Josie. Not with her looking at you like this. Like you hold all the answers in the world. You don’t. Not a single one. 

“I don’t know—I don’t know where we stand,” you admit, trying not to stammer over your words. You fail miserably. “I feel like everything has changed, but nothing at the same time. Like we’re right back where we started.” 

Your mind swarms. Words do not come easy. They never have for you. It’s time you get used to it. “I don’t know, God, _I don’t know_ where to go from here. Where do we go from here?” 

_ You don’t know.  _

“How about this...?” Josie leans forward and takes your hand in her own. You aren’t sure what you had been expecting. A pause, a break, an awkward silence in between? Whatever you were expecting, it’s not this. 

The siphoner pulls you to her and covers your lips with her own in a sweet, soft kiss. For once, you close your eyes and just _enjoy_ it. You enjoy the way her fingertips brush over the bones of your knuckles and the lines of your palm, the way her full, pouty lips feel against yours, the way she tastes just like your dreams. 

You had been right earlier. It’s very hard to stop. You don’t know what it is, but you can feel it pressing into your chest, looming over your shoulder. You never want to stop. This is everything you have ever wanted. You want to stay in this moment forever. But wanting and knowing are two very different things, and you know that you can’t. 

“Can we just be this?” Josie backs away and pants against your mouth, eyes slowly blinking open to meet yours. She smiles, and you get lost in the upturn of her lips, lost in the memory of her mouth touching yours. 

You don’t realize it right away, but you’re smiling, too. 

“Yeah,” you say, a little bit breathless, a little bit dazed, more than a little bit in love with her. 

—

The next day after school, you meet up with Emma for a therapy session in her office. Not because you want to, of course, but because Alaric had forced you to. 

“I’m going to be up front with you,” the guidance counselor tells you, not unkindly, after more than half an hour of silence. “Frankly, we’ve been sitting here for thirty minutes and you haven’t uttered a single word.” 

“Thirty-four,” you correct. Emma gives you a look, taken aback by your attitude. You don’t mean to be rude, it’s just, you really don’t want to be here. You’ve been counting the seconds until you get to leave. The session is only an hour long, after all. 

“Okay,” Emma says slowly, leaning back in her chair to consider you. “Why don’t we talk about why you’re here?” 

You part your lips and then press them together again. How could you ever describe what had happened? How could you ever find the right words to confess what you’ve done out loud? You can barely acknowledge it to yourself. 

“Dr. Saltzman told me that you were having some trouble with your wolf,” the woman continues, perhaps taking note of your reluctance. 

“_Trouble_?” you ask, a hint of snark to your voice that you can’t quite keep out. “Is that what he called it?” 

Emma raises an eyebrow and clasps her hands in her lap. She smiles gently. Part of you is unnerved by it. “What would you call it?” 

“I...” You stop yourself short. 

You think of Josie. You blink once, twice, three times, you open your mouth, close it. You swallow the lump in your throat, and then you say nothing at all. 

Across from you, Emma sighs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know if there’s anything you wanna see next chapter, i’m gonna try adding as much fluff as possible since this whole story was a bunch of angst 
> 
> thank you for reading :)


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> damn, it’s really been a year lol

“This is nothing.” 

You pace across Emma’s office, face flushed and words coming rushed and frantic. It seems that you can’t get them out fast enough. 

“My father died for me,” you ramble on, “I practically _killed_ my mother. Compared to that, this should be nothing. I should be able to get over it, yet I...” 

Damn it. 

It’s been three months since your first session with the guidance counselor, yet you still can’t find the words to explain what happened. You still can’t make Emma understand that you’re wasting her time. 

Even now, she stares up at you expectantly, sitting nice and calm behind her desk as you walk back and forth, tongue asking, _begging_ for the right words. 

“I...” you start again, but nothing comes out all the same. You clear your throat, running a hand through your tangled, messy hair. You’ve been messing it up all afternoon. 

“Don’t belittle your trauma just because you’ve been through worse,” Emma tells you, voice kind and gentle. That’s always how it is with her. Kind and gentle. Patient. Even as you feel as though you are _seconds_ away from falling apart right in front of her. “It’s still trauma.” 

“No.” You shake your head resolutely. “It’s not.” 

Emma’s eyes soften. The clock on the wall ticks once, twice—

“It’s not mine,” you reiterate, because it’s not _your_ trauma. Not really. Not even trauma at all. But how do you say that? “No. This isn’t my trauma to carry. This...” 

You clench your eyes shut and sigh. “Ugh.” How can you convince her? How can you convince her that this is not your pain? That you caused _Josie_ pain? That this is _Josie’s_ trauma? 

“Josie...” 

You trail off. Damn it. You had sworn to yourself that you would stop mentioning her to Emma, so that she would never figure out how important the siphoner is to you. A part of you knows that you’ve already given yourself away far too much. 

“How _is_ your relationship with Josie?” Emma catches the slip-up all the same. Her innocent tone unnerves you. “I can’t help but notice that you’ve been bringing her up a lot in our sessions. I...heard that you started dating a few weeks ago.”

Your eyes snap up to hers from where they had been staring at the floor. You and Josie had decided to wait to put a label on anything for a few months. 

“Who told you that?” You bite down on your lip to keep the words down, but they’re already out. You’ve never been good at keeping your temper in check. 

Emma only smiles. “Josie.” 

You raise your eyebrows at that. A hopeful smile flickers at your own lips. “She did?” 

“Yes.” The counselor nods, looking pleased that she got such a reaction out of you. You instantly regret being so transparent. “I would even say that you’re a frequent topic in our sessions.” 

For a moment, you forgot that Josie had started therapy with Emma right alongside you. It makes you feel a little better thinking about it now. It gives you pause all the same. 

“Wait.” You blink. “Are you allowed to tell me that?” 

What ever happened to the code of confidentiality Emma pledged herself to the first time you did this with her? 

The counselor only smiles. 

“Well, considering that she’s a frequent topic in your sessions as well,” she says, “I thought it would be fair. Now, can you tell me why that is?” 

_ For one, she’s my girlfriend, dumbass.  _

But it’s more than that. Much more. 

Your jaw clenches. Just enough for your teeth to start to ache. Just enough for your throat to burn. “I attacked her, you know that,” you bite out, looking over Emma’s shoulder, because how can you even dare to look her in the eye? 

Emma shakes her head. 

“Josie is fine, Hope. You’ve told me that she’s accepted your apology a million times. Why can’t you move on?” Your eyes flash. Move on? Like it’s that easy? “You attacked Elizabeth and Milton when they tried to move you to the werewolf transformation spaces that night, yet you’ve barely mentioned them. Why is she different?” 

You scowl. “Hey, I feel bad for that, too.”

“But not as much,” Emma adds. And, damn it, she’s right. She’s _right_. 

“Josie is—“ _Special_. Your words die on the tip of your tongue.

It’s quiet for a while. 

Emma ends up being the one to break the silence again. “This is your last day,” she tells you. “While I would have liked more time with you, Alaric did make you a deal, and I intend for him to keep it.” 

Oh. Right. You briefly remember that these sessions are mandatory, and that you’re only going to them because Alaric had been forcing you to all this time. Somewhere along the past three months, you had started to like coming over here, if only for the chance to sit in silence with nothing but your own thoughts. 

(Sessions with Emma were always silent for the most part.)

The woman glances at the clock. “In ten minutes, these sessions will no longer be mandatory. My office is always open, of course, but I’m not going to be so naive as to think that you’ll choose to spend your afternoons with me of your own free will.” She laughs to herself. You don’t find it as funny. 

“Still,” Emma continues, “I would like to achieve some peace of mind before you go. I feel that we’ve come a long way, and I want to thank you for everything that you’ve shared with me, and for being so honest and open.”

She stops herself short, mouth closing and opening again. Her eyes narrow in thoughtful contemplation. “There is one thing I would like to address, however. Particularly, the potion itself.” 

Your jaw clenches. You already know what’s coming. You can’t avoid it. “Why can’t you accept that magic is to blame for all of this?” Emma asks. “That none of this is your fault, or anyone else’s?” 

Damn it. She asks you this question every week. You’ve never given her an answer. This time is no different. Maybe you don’t even know it yourself. Maybe you do. 

(You can hardly blame desiderio potum, since your obsession with Josie had started long before.)

“What do you think?” you ask her, instead.

Emma leans back in her chair and sets the notepad in her hands down on the table. It’s blank. It always has been with you. Briefly, you wonder if it’s the same for Josie. Maybe you should ask her if you ever get the chance. 

“I think that you’re blaming yourself because you think that someone needs to be punished for what happened,” the counselor says. “If not your teacher for his negligence and ignorance, then the headmaster for not rightfully disciplining you. If not him, then his daughter. But no. You could never blame her. Then it has to be _you_.” 

Heat crawls up your throat. You have to clear it before you speak. 

“That doesn’t make any sense,” you choke out. You feel faint. 

Emma tilts her head to the side and looks at you curiously. She smiles. “Doesn’t it?” 

—

Ten minutes later, you leave the guidance counselor’s office with a deep scowl, grumbling curses underneath your breath and glaring down at the floor. 

Your frown slips off your face when you look up and realize that Josie is waiting outside in the hallway for you. She brightens up when she sees you and waves. 

“How was your session?” 

“Good—“ 

You don’t have much time before she’s closing the distance and shoving a piece of paper into your face. Damn. She usually gives you a hug or a kiss in greeting. You press your lips together and pout. 

“Look!” she practically squeals, ignoring the look on your face in her excitement. Then, in a sing-song tone of voice, she adds loudly, “We got an _A_.” 

You raise your eyebrows at her with a vaguely amused look. Your gaze drops down to the paper, which reads:

** Desiderio Potum Project Grading Rubric **

Sure enough, the letter A is written across the top in bold, red ink. 

“We?” You let out a laugh like a scoff. “I haven’t been in that class for months.” 

Josie pouts, and this time, she does give you a hug _and_ a kiss. On the cheek. Damn it. Maybe you’re a little starved. “You still helped.” 

“Not really,” you tell her, smiling as she hides her face in the crook of your neck. She’s been doing that a lot, you’ve noticed. It might have something to do with the triangle mark she placed there. She still hasn’t bothered to remove it even though she’s the only one who can, and you still haven’t bothered to ask her to. “I can’t take credit if I didn’t do any of the work.” 

“Sure you can.” Josie leans away from you, eyes fluttering shut for just a second. You wonder if she’s tired. You know she was up all of last night studying for her Latin test. “I might have made the potion, but you wrote the essay. I’d say that’s pretty even.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” you murmur, not really listening, your hand lingering where it’s curled around her hip. Your other hand reaches up and moves towards the strand of hair that had fallen in front of her eyes, tucking it behind her ear. 

The truth is, you don’t really want to talk about the potion. Writing the essay on it had been hell, but you didn’t want Josie to think you were an awful partner, and you didn’t want to make her do all of the work. 

“Don’t—“ Josie starts, but she doesn’t get to finish. 

“Gross.” The insult comes from the other side of the hallway as a person walks past you two, but not without them calling out, “Get a room.” 

You drop your hand from Josie and look away from her, eyes falling on a blonde vampire. You frown. It’s that girl that said she would let you fuck her six ways to Sunday.

Josie narrows her eyes after the blonde, tanned cheeks flushing dark pink. You watch her glare at the other girl until she disappears down the hall. She looks like a puppy trying to appear grumpy. It’s kind of cute. Josie then blinks and turns back to you. 

“Whatever,” she mutters, before giving you a tight-lipped smile. “Are we still on for tonight?” 

Right. 

_Tonight_. 

It’s your first night shifting into your wolf for three months. 

It’s a Friday, and you and Josie had picked today so you’ll have the weekend to recover from whatever happens. You haven’t trusted yourself to do so until now. A part of you still doesn’t. Another, different part of you altogether knows that you need to soon or else it’ll all come out at the worst possible moment. 

Maybe Josie knows that, too, and that’s why she’s been encouraging you to do it and to let her watch for so long. You’re obviously not going to let her watch, you think, but whatever makes her happy until she realizes it. 

“Sure.” You try for your own smile, but it looks more like a grimace than anything else. Then, more hesitantly, you add, “As long as you’re still fine with it...” 

You trail off and look to Josie, but she just grins. 

“More than fine,” she tells you, smiling so wide that you’re afraid her cheeks will break out into two. “I’m so excited.” 

Damn. 

Your stomach twists in guilt. You don’t even know yet if you’ll be able to shift after such a long time of not doing it. Full moons had been absolutely awful trying to resist the urge, trying to resist the pull to break your bones and reform them, to shed your skin and let your canines set in, but you had been able to withstand the pain and hold out against the impulse, the instinct.

And now? 

What if you won’t be able to? What if your wolf decides to punish you? She’s been quiet for so long you’re scared that she’s not even there anymore. It’s like the both of you are two separate beings. And maybe you _are_. 

What’s worse, maybe, is the chance that once you do shift, you won’t be able to come back. 

You’re afraid that your wolf will seize the opportunity to take control again and you’ll never get to hold Josie, kiss her—_love_ her again. 

“Hope?” 

Fuck. You haven’t said anything for a while. You gulp and look down, shifting your weight from foot to foot, searching for something to say. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“It’s just—I don’t want you to get your hopes up,” you admit. You can’t quite meet her eyes. Her own are searing into you like a brand. “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to control myself in that form yet, or if I’ll even be able to shift, okay? Until I know for sure, I can’t let you see me.” 

You and Josie had already talked about the possibility of that happening, but lately she’s been acting like it doesn’t even exist, like there’s no way you’ll ever hurt her. You’re not so sure. 

“Right.” Josie shakes her head, like she had forgotten something obvious. She gives you another reassuring smile that makes your shoulders relax. “Don’t worry. I’ll be in the old mill waiting for you. If it doesn’t work out, we can still have our date like we planned.” 

You sigh. 

“Jo.” The brunette blushes, but whether it’s at the nickname or the reprimand, you don’t know.“You weren’t supposed to tell me where, remember?” 

Fuck. How do you say this? “You know, just in case my wolf wants to...uh...” 

Josie looks at you blankly. She certainly isn’t making this easier for you. 

“Seek you out?” you finish, finally, after a solid minute of stammering over your words. Josie blushes again, if that’s even possible. 

“Oh!” she squeaks. Maybe feeling embarrassed or shy, she rubs at a sore spot on her neck. It makes her wince. You remember sucking a hickey into the skin there a few days ago. Something low and hot twists in your abdomen. “Yeah. Sorry. I’ll pick a different hiding place.” 

You swallow hard. The guilt comes back full force. 

“Hiding place?” 

Josie’s eyes widen. She starts to laugh nervously. 

“I meant ‘waiting spot.’ Ha. Oops.” You frown. 

“Hey, if you’re not comfortable—“ you start, placing a hand under her elbow to reassure her, but Josie cuts you off. 

“No!” the siphoner jumps in, quickly, almost too quickly. Her eyes dart around the hallway shyly. “I want to see you.” 

This time, it’s your turn to blush. 

“Okay,” you say, oddly breathless, gaze on the floor. “Don’t forget to bring a jacket. It’s going to be cold.” 

There’s a pause, then, where your eyes have no choice but to stray from the floor and back to hers. 

For some reason, Josie is biting her lip and looking a bit insecure. 

“Actually, do you think you I can borrow one of yours?” she asks. 

“Uh...” You trail off, unsure. Well. That’s a little random. 

“I ran out,” Josie is quick to explain. You raise your eyebrows, finally understanding what’s happening. 

“Of clothes?” You try in vain to suppress the smirk on your face. 

“Yes.” 

“Okay,” you say, slowly, unconvinced, dragging out the word. 

“I just mean that all my jackets are in the laundry and—“ Josie babbles on, until you interrupt. 

“You just want one of my hoodies, don’t you?” you ask, narrowing your eyes with that same, knowing smirk playing at your lips. 

Josie shrugs with a small lift of her shoulders. It’s adorable. 

“Is that a yes?” she asks, and of course it is, but you’re not going to tell her. 

“I don’t know,” you tease. “I think you’ll have to convince me.” 

—

That’s how you end up in the supply closet down the hall, shoved against a wall with a broomstick handle digging into your back and Josie’s lips on yours. 

You break away to pant against her mouth. “Is this...okay...?” you ask, a little bit annoyed at yourself for sounding so affected.You haven’t even been making out with her for a full minute. 

Josie nods and eagerly leans in again, but it’s you that seals your lips back together and presses into her this time. Her back hits a shelf and she sighs into your mouth, fingers tugging into your hair, the tips of them raking against your scalp. 

Every scrape of her nails feels like electricity running down into your skin, and you feel like you’re practically buzzing at the seams of where she ends and you begin. 

It’s been about a day since you’ve really kissed her like this, but it’s been a day too long. You’re not going to wait a second longer. 

And you don’t. 

You kiss Josie long and hard and _urgent_, and when she squirms and arches off the shelf, you slam her back against it so you can kiss her even more. 

She tilts her head to the side and lets you deepen the kiss, lets you swipe your tongue along the line of her lips and explore inside. She meets you with her own fervently, pull for pull and push for push. 

You feel warm. 

_She’s_ warm. 

Her heat seems to sear into your school uniform at every point of contact: your chests brushing against each other, her hands in your hair, your own burning at her waist, thumbing her hipbones. 

You tighten your hold. Just a little. Just enough to hear, to feel her moan into your mouth, just enough for her to pull away and let her head fall back against the shelf with a dull thud. 

You flutter your eyes open to make sure she’s okay—she’s great, she’s perfect, just for you, _just for you_—before clenching them back shut, searching in the dark until your lips meet the column of her throat. 

You press a kiss to her pulse point, nipping at the spot just below. 

Gently. 

You’ve been working on your self-control. 

More often than not, you have to remind yourself to be gentle, to keep your touches light, to treat her delicately, to make sure your grip on her isn’t ever too tight or too rough, to press your lips together whenever you feel venom pooling in your mouth, whenever you feel your canines poking their way out, to clench your eyes shut whenever you can just barely glimpse the edges of your vision turning yellow, turning gold. 

You don’t know if Josie has ever noticed how much you have to hold yourself back for her. You wouldn’t be surprised if she has. You’re not the best at hiding it, especially when a pained groan works its way out of your mouth or a growl starts rumbling in your chest. 

Especially when a memory or a feeling you thought you had forgotten comes back into your mind and settles itself in between each and every one of your thoughts:

How you had almost bitten her, how you had almost sunk your teeth beneath her skin and how much you had yearned to feel her blood on your tongue, to claim her. 

How you had left bruises on her skin—dark reds and mottled purples—like paint, and sure, you thought you had loved painting, but not like that, never like that. Until you suddenly never wanted anything more. 

With the memories and feelings, also come the urges. They tear at you, inside of you, so often that you’ll forget that you’re not under the effects of the potion anymore, that you’re not stuck standing in the past. 

Sometimes, like now, they’ll come so close to the surface that you’ll feel the urge just beneath your skin. 

“Fuck,” you curse, backing away from Josie to give yourself a second to breathe, to think. You need to calm down. _Calm down_. Somehow, your hands have worked their way to her ass. How did they even get there? 

Josie seems to take the moment that you two separate as a chance to take off her clothes. Her hands fly down the buttons of her uniform, before grabbing your own and placing them on the hot skin of her exposed stomach. 

You choke on another curse, forcing your eyes up to the ceiling. Fuck. Fuck. You’ve never touched her like this before. You’ve never seen so much of her skin on display. 

So much skin, so ready for your teeth to sink into and _claim_—

Josie pulls you back into her, your lips falling along the elegant hollow of her neck once again. They skim across her pulse point, right over the harsh thundering of her pounding heart. Her heady scent fills your head like smoke. 

Oh. Oh no. You need to control yourself. _Control_. You need to calm down. _Calm down_. 

Everything is fine. Nothing is happening. _Nothing_— 

“Your mouth feels so good,” Josie tells you, voice just above a whisper. You clench your eyes shut, even as the words echo and hammer into your skull. God. 

“I think,” you say, gritting your teeth together, trying desperately to calm down, “I think I’m going to bite you.” 

“Okay.” Josie’s voice comes out honeyed and distracted, fingers tangling, pulling at your hair, guiding you lower. “Just do it below the collar so I won’t have to hide it.” 

She doesn’t get it. 

“No. I’m going to bite you. _Fuck_.” You try to shove yourself away, but you can’t move all the same. “Get away from me, Josie. Go.” 

Josie must feel the hint of teeth at her pulse point because she leans away and instantly straightens up against the shelf. She blinks a few times to clear the fog. “Oh.” 

The siphoner pushes you back with two hands on your shoulders, but she keeps them there, holding you away at a distance. You try not to glance down to her chest, which is left open by her unbuttoned shirt. 

“No. I’m not going anywhere,” she says, looking like her mind is made up. “Last time I tried to leave when this happened, it just made it worse, remember?” 

You nod in a daze. You can barely swallow over the venom pooling in your mouth. It stings at the back of your throat. 

But she’s right. The last time she had tried to walk out on you, you had slammed her up against the wall until she showed her neck and bowed her head in submission. 

“Okay.” Josie begins to softly stroke your shoulders. “What about the control exercise Miss Tig taught you?” 

The question is so out of nowhere that it distracts you. Just enough. 

“The...the breathing one?” Your voice comes out far too husky and rough, but Josie nods and doesn’t seem to care. 

“Mhmm.” 

Your eyebrows scrunch up together as you try to remember the steps, but you’ve forgotten them. What had Emma said? 

“I, I don’t know,” you mumble, and why is it so hard to think? “I—I can’t remember how to...” 

Josie continues to rub your shoulders. “That’s okay, baby.” 

Your eyelids fall shut at the pet name. You feel like jelly in the palm of her hands. You don’t even notice the warm, red glow emanating from her fingertips. 

“Here,” she says, causing your eyes to blink open. You look down and notice that she’s siphoning from you. Over the years, Josie and her sister had learned how to take magic without causing pain, but now, you can tell that the brunette is purposely trying to take away your life force. The pain distracts you enough that you forget why you even needed it in the first place. “Does that feel better?” 

You let out a choked groan. It does. “Much. Thank you.” 

Josie smiles, a quick little thing that is gone in the breadth of a second. A beat of silence passes and then drags on. 

She finally stops siphoning from you and releases her hold on your shoulders. You blink and stumble into her, dizzy from how much she took. Your legs wobble before you steady yourself with your palms pressed into the shelf behind her. 

You drop your head down in shame. “I’m sorry,” you apologize, heat scorching your face like white-hot guilt. It feels like your skin is on fire. 

“It’s okay,” Josie murmurs, her fingers tapping away at the spot below your chin. She lifts it up and forces you to look her in the eye. 

“No, it’s not,” you tell her, swallowing hard. “I need to be more gentle with you, more kind, more like _Penelope_—“

“Hope.” 

You ignore her. 

“You said you liked it when she was gentle with you, right?” Josie had said that a while ago, but the words have stayed with you until this very day. They’ll haunt you forever. “I’m sorry, I’ve been trying, I really have, it’s just—“

“You _are_ gentle with me,” Josie says, eyes dark and sure. “You always ask for permission before holding my hand or trying to kiss me, even when I kiss you first. Sometimes you lose control, and sure, it can get a little scary, but I like it.” 

Your eyes flash. 

“You like it?” 

Josie pinks. 

“Yeah.” She bites down on her bottom lip and sucks it into her mouth. You stay silent and wait for her to explain, but she doesn’t. After a minute passes of you quietly watching her, she asks, in a small voice, “Do you feel like hurting me right now?” 

Your chest grows tight. Of course not. Maybe it had never been a problem of you feeling like hurting her, you realize. Maybe it had just beena problem of _thinking_ you could.

And you had never thought you could until a few months ago. Does that make it your fault or the potion’s? 

(Maybe Emma was a little bit right.) 

“No.” 

“See.” Josie smiles, nice and wide. Her lips are a little red and swollen from the kiss you two shared. If such a chaotic thing can even be called that. “You’re doing better than you think.” 

Your heart bursts in your chest. She’s looking at you with so much adoration, so much _love_, you think you’ll surely explode. 

“Thank you. I...” 

_ I love you.  _

Damn it. 

“I really appreciate you,” you finish, even if your voice cracks at the very edges. Josie’s smile grows even wider. 

“Of course.” She strokes your jaw. You love it, even if it does feel a little bit like she’s petting you like you’re a dog. “I will always be here for you.” 

Her phone suddenly buzzes. You help her button her shirt back up as she answers the call. She squeaks when your hand accidentally brushes up against the underside of her bra. 

“_Ah_!—hello?” 

Lizzie is on the other line. 

“I’m in the bathroom,” Josie lies, looking around the supply closet. You smother down a laugh. Part of the reason why you had waited so long to date Josie was because of her sister—and the promise you had made to her to stay away. “No, Hope is not with me in the stall. Why would I lie about that? Wait, what? You want me to flush the toilet to prove it? Lizzie. Yes, I’m coming right now. Five minutes. I’ll see you soon.” 

When she hangs up, she fixes you with an apologetic look. 

“I take that back,” she says. You raise your eyebrows, a hint of a smile on your lips. “I have to go. Lizzie wants me to help her make a celebration cake for MG.” 

You tilt your head to the side, curious. “What are they celebrating?” 

Josie grins. “His one month anniversary off of human blood.” 

Huh. You had no idea MG was feeding off of humans. You did know that he had been seeing Emma, though. The boy has his sessions before you, so sometimes you catch him on your way in. You always wondered why he was visiting Emma so much. Maybe Alaric hadn’t given him a choice, either. 

“Oh.” You lean away, taken aback. Your eyes narrow on their own. “Who gave him human blood?” 

Josie only shrugs. “He wouldn’t say, but I’m pretty sure it was Kaleb.” 

She opens the door of the supply closet, but not before turning back. 

“Do you want me to save you a slice?” she asks. Your stomach flutters, and not just at the thought of eating cake, but because she even offered it up in the first place. 

“Oh, no,” you wave her off, running your hands through your hair to fix it. Josie really messed it up. Damn. “I’m fine, thanks.” 

“Okay.” Josie gives you one last smile. “See you later.” 

The door shuts behind her. 

You sigh and lean against the shelf, struggling to catch your breath. It feels like all the air in the room left with her. 

—

Hours later, you stand in the forest by yourself, stark naked with your clothes stacked in a neat pile in your arms. You gently place them behind a bush along with your phone. 

It’s cold. 

That’s the first thing you notice. 

You usually run hot because of your wolf, but you haven’t in months. A shiver runs down your spine and you have to roll your shoulders back several times to relax and fight off the chill. 

The truth is, you’re _nervous_. 

You can feel the itch to change pulling at you, but every time you try to scratch it and let it consume you, it’s gone. It’s here again, now that you’ve stepped into the protection of the the forest and the cover of the trees.

You crouch down onto all fours, but it feels awkward and stiff like it never has before. Are you even a fucking wolf anymore? 

A second passes. Ten. A full minute. Nothing happens. 

Damn it. Josie’s waiting for you. You need to get a move on, you need to get this over with fast, you need to make sure that you have enough control to show the siphoner this part of you. She’s waiting for you. You can’t help but remember how excited she had been earlier for this. 

God, she’s so sweet. You really don’t deserve her. 

Your thoughts begin to stray to your time together a few hours ago in the supply closet, to the kisses you had shared. You can still feel the phantom touch of her body moving against yours, the whispered ghost of her moans in your ears. You can still imagine the way she had told you how good your mouth felt on her skin, the way she had preened underneath your fingertips. 

Hmm. Maybe this isn’t the best time to be thinking about stuff like that. Especially when you’re naked. 

Something like gold begins to make its way into the very edges of your vision, casting the sky and the trees and the forest floor in sunshine. Your eyes sharpen, so that you can see every shadow and movement more keenly and clearer than ever before. 

You shake your head and blink quickly to distract yourself from your rather distasteful thoughts of Josie, digging your nails into the dirt to ground yourself. You startle forward when you see that they’re no longer nails, but claws instead. 

The gold remains. 

Then, everything happens all at once. 

The bones in your fingers snap out of place and then back, elbows and shoulders dislocating, heart and lungs rearranging. The pain is almost too much to handle, and your head lurches forward on its own and brings the rest of your body with it. 

It hurts. Of course it does. Not as bad as the first time you had shifted when you were fourteen, but it’s definitely up there. 

Well, that’s an understatement. 

It feels like you’re bursting into flames, like you’re walking across a line of fire that never ends. Your skin is too hot and the ground is too hot and the _air_ is too hot, and you’re burning. _Burning_. You had been cold earlier, but now you’re afraid that you’re going to die from the heat. 

If that’s not bad enough, your gums begin to ache and stretch and bleed, and before long the incisors in your mouth extend into canines and fangs, poking at your lips for escape. You open your mouth and scream. 

Funny, you think, that you had tried to hide your wolf from Josie for so long, and it’s _funny_, that she is the one who ended up bringing out that part of you in the end. 

It feels like coming home, when you finally shift into your wolf and let your paws hit the ground, an explosion of white fur and yellow eyes and a homesick heart. 

What had you ever been so scared of? 

You feel good. Strong. The pain is gone. Your claws are sharp, eyes narrowed and clear. The little hairs on your ears stand and prickle on edge. You can hear everything—

The sound of birds chirping, squeaking into the dark clouds above. A steady drip of water at a nearby pond. A worm moving beneath the dirt, coming up to the surface. 

You can smell everything, too. 

Your nose is instantly filled with scents of the forest: rich pine, wet grass, decaying mushrooms and dead animals. The faint smell of rain is there, too, and you can’t help but think that it’s a sign of the storm to come. You sniff again before you stop and just decide to just hold your breath. You don’t want to accidentally pick up Josie’s scent and prey after her. 

The mere thought that she’s somewhere outside nearby is enough to entice you. 

You stay completely still for a couple of minutes, trying to get used to the feeling of your wolf after several months of not shifting. It’s weird, but not entirely unfamiliar, and after the few minutes pass, you take an experimental step forward. 

Only to trip on your own two front paws and get a mouthful of dirt. 

You sigh and pick yourself up off the ground. Damn it. This sucks. Much more than when a bear had attacked you a year ago for eating some of his honey. You had just wanted to see if it tasted differently in your wolf form, but he hadn’t appreciated that very much. 

You take another step, but this time you don’t fall. Before long, you’re running, faster than you ever have, with your paws pounding into the ground beneath you and the thick of the air clinging to your fur. 

Your wolf had never been upset with you, you can see that painfully clearly now. Maybe you had just imagined it. Maybe it had just been some sort of twisted withdrawal symptom from the potion. How could you have ever distanced yourself away from _this_? 

From the feeling of running without the exertion, of being lighter than the wind, of your paws sinking into the dirt but not breaking the surface? Of relief? 

Restless energy that has been building up for months inside of you is released with every step, every breath. Your lungs have never felt more full, more empty, than when you and your wolf are one. Your eyes grow wet with the painful reminder that you could have been doing this a long time ago, if only you realized it. Why had you waited so long? 

God, you should have just listened to Josie. How many times had she encouraged you to let go and try? To shift and just get it over with? That there was nothing to be afraid of? 

Fuck. Josie—

Who is still waiting for you. 

But are you ready for her to see you? A deeper thought comes. Can you trust your wolf with her after everything that happened? 

You take a deep breath as you think about it, and then another and one more. You’re sure, now. You have nothing to be afraid of. Josie doesn’t, either. You won’t attack her. You never will. The potion is gone, and the wolf that was corrupted underneath its effects is gone, too. 

It’s time to go back to Josie. 

You slow down to a complete stop, looking around. You’re pretty far from the school. How long had you been running for? It couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. 

Well, whatever it had been, it’s all over too soon. You huff and turn back around, running and running until you reach the familiar bush you had hid your clothes and phone in earlier. 

Shifting back into your human form is easier than you expected it to be. Your wolf doesn’t put up much of a fight, as if she knows you’ll be back soon, anyway. After changing into your old clothes, you pick up your phone. You have five texts from Josie, all from different times. 

** hey **

** :( **

** oops, i meant :)* **

** are you okay?  **

** hope?  **

The last one was sent just a minute ago. You smile and type out your own response. 

** Sorry, I got carried away. All good. Where are you? **

Instantly: 

** yay!!!!!!!!!!!!! **

You rub your forehead at the thirteen exclamation points. 

** in the cave across the school’s lake, come find me ;) **

Well, that’s kind of vague. 

You shrug and tuck your phone into the pocket of your sweatpants before pausing. Should you approach Josie in your human form and then change later, or should you just get it over with and meet up with her as a wolf instead? 

For now, you start walking over to the lake. The sky has startled to drizzle, and the small droplets soaks into your hair as you finally approach the lake. When you reach the dock, you realize that you can’t find the cave anywhere. 

Before today, you never knew the lake even had one. Farther down into the forest, maybe, but certainly not this close to the school. 

You close your eyes and try to focus on your hearing and sense of smell to find Josie, but the rain has picked up and the siphoner’s scent is hard to trail in this form. 

Sighing, you go behind a tree, place your clothes on a branch, and shift into your wolf for the second time tonight. The soft scent of cinnamon and vanilla immediately wafts into your nose, as well as the sweet sound of someone humming underneath their breath. 

_Josie_. 

You find the cave at a point on the lake farthest from the school, lit by some candles. You tilt your head to the side and trot carefully inside, not wanting to scare Josie. 

She’s kneeling in the middle of a fort of pillows and blankets when you see her, an open basket and several containers of fruits sitting next to her. You quietly watch her bend over and pluck a strawberry out of the basket. 

She places it between her lips and takes a small bite, still humming the words to a song you don’t know. She’s so pretty. You want to tell her that. The only thing on your mind is telling her that. You have no urge to claim her, or bite her. You just want to tell her that she’s pretty. 

How do you get her attention? 

You could growl, but you don’t want to scare her. Maybe if you—

A bark echoes into the cave. Josie screams and whirls around, the uneaten half of the strawberry falling to the ground. She places a steadying hand over her heaving chest as her eyes fall on you. 

You wonder if she’s ever seen you like this before. You’re pretty sure she hasn’t.

A tense, stilted beat passes. 

“Hope?” Josie asks slowly, as if expecting you to run away in a flurry of fur and footfalls if she makes any sudden movements. You can’t tell if she’s afraid of you. 

You hunch in on yourself to make yourself appear less threatening, and it seems to work. As your burning eyes set into hers, a flash of recognition warms her own and relaxes her shoulders. 

She sighs in relief and smiles something loving and fond. It makes your chest grow hot and fuzzy. Your eyes are shining brighter than they ever have.

“Hey, babe—“ 

Her smile gets you far too excited for your own good. Suddenly, you’re crossing the small distance between you two and tackling her to the ground before you can think twice about it, tail wagging happily in the air. 

“Oh my...” 

Josie squeals as her back hits the blanket. Her laughs echo into the cave and find solace in your ears. You lick over her face eagerly, unable to turn away from the instinct to shower her in kisses. 

“_Ew_! Stop!” Josie swats at you and bats your tongue away. You pull back reluctantly, pleased to see that her face is a little wet and that her cheeks are dark pink. She props herself up on her elbows, raising her hand to your muzzle. 

“You have dirt on your nose,” she murmurs, placing the pads of her fingertips right at your snout. She brushes over the fur until she’s satisfied, making a small, contented noise at the back of her throat. “There.” 

“You’re so cute,” she tells you, inching her fingers higher and letting them scratch behind your right ear. You want to growl at her, but it feels kind of good so you don’t. Well, it feels more than kind of good, but you’re not going to tell her that yourself.

Josie scoots back and takes her hand away from you, placing it on the blanket. You have to clamp your jaws shut to resist whining at the loss of contact. “Here.” 

Josie pats the space next to her. “Sit.” 

You dip your head down in a nod and listen, crouching on your back paws and sitting up. You’re still taller than her, and for a second you enjoy the view this gives you. You’ve always been a little bit shorter than her. Now, she looks so small compared to you. 

“Good girl.” She pats your head again, but she has to sit up to do it. A growl rumbles in your chest. She seems to hear it and flushes. “Sorry, was that too much?” 

You look at her blankly. 

“I bet you can’t even understand me,” Josie says, laughing at herself. You tilt your head at her, but you say nothing. The siphoner continues to talk, almost absentmindedly. 

It sounds like her words are more for her than for you. 

“I made us some food in the kitchen,” she tells you, drawing little circles in the space between your ears. You close your eyes and enjoy it while it lasts. “I thought we could have a picnic, but I guess we can save that for later now. Honestly, I didn’t think you’d show up like this. Do you like the candles?” 

You almost open your mouth to let out another bark before stopping yourself. Instead, you grunt out your answer. Josie smiles, taking the sides of your face in her hands. She looks at you like you’re a neatly-wrapped Christmas present or something. 

“Do you wanna play fetch?” she asks, grinning with a sugary uplilt to her voice. 

This time, you do growl. Your tail doesn’t seem to agree with you, though, and it starts wagging limply behind you in anticipation. 

“_Fetch_?” Josie repeats. She beams even wider at the reaction. “Do you know that word?” 

“I’m a wolf, not a mutt,” you bite out, but all Josie hears is a bunch of barking and growling. 

“You know that you just barked at me, right?” she asks, sounding almost too happy with herself. “Sorry, babe, I don’t speak dog.” 

“I’m not a fucking dog,” you curse, but again, all the siphoner hears is:

_Bark_. 

Josie laughs and opens her mouth, presumably to respond to you, but instead she just barks back. 

God. She’s a child. 

You drop your chin to the ground and sigh, long and deep. It sounds a bit like something between a whine and a howl. Of course, you’re not really frustrated with Josie, but admitting that outloud would destroy your pride. 

What really hurts your pride is when the siphoner starts searching around the cave for a stick, and what hurts a bit more is when your tail visibly starts going crazy again when she finds one. 

Like a good, little wolf, you go chasing after the stick when she throws it out of the cave, if only to humor her and bring another smile to her face. Never mind that you chase after it so quickly that you don’t realize where the stick is going until it ends up in the lake. 

With you right after it. 

Your head dunks beneath the surface and you have to kick your way out of the water, looking every bit a drowned puppy. You’re all slimy and wet, now, too, making your fur appear much darker than it actually is. Great. 

“Oh my God,” Josie gasps out when she sees you, but you don’t miss the tiny snicker she chokes down at your expense. “I’m so sorry.” 

You cast your eyes down and glare into the ground, dropping the stick at her feet. A sly smirk curls at your lips, but Josie doesn’t see it right away. When the siphoner bends down to pick the stick up, you purposely shake your coat of fur out and cover her in lake water. 

She shrieks and throws her hands out in front of her like that’ll shield her from it. You bark happily and trot around her, sitting in the middle of the blankets she set up, even though you’re still a little bit wet. 

“Okay.” Josie’s teeth chatter. She stomps over to you and crosses her arms. “That wasn’t funny.” 

You ignore her and roll around on the blankets. You’re kind of tired. And hungry. Does Josie have anymore strawberries? 

Now that you think about it, your nose is kind of itching, too. Whatever. 

Hmm. 

Do you want to sleep or do you want to eat? Maybe sleep now, eat later? Yeah, that sounds good. Your wolf likes that idea very much. 

“Hey, asshat,” Josie pokes at you with a single finger, and then rubs her hands together for warmth. “I’m still cold.” 

You glance at the candles around the both of you in emphasis. Josie doesn’t seem to notice. She starts to look around before she gets an idea. 

She grins and dives into the picnic basket, pulling out a black jacket. It’s one of your hoodies. She slips it on and hugs herself, inhaling into the fabric. The smile on her face makes you stare at her, forgetting about your plan to fall asleep seconds ago. 

You lift yourself up off the blankets and lean towards her. You accidentally underestimate your strength, sending her flying on her back, with you landing right on top of the brunette. 

“Oh.” Josie’s chest rises and falls once, twice. The fast pace of her heart slows. Time seems to stop all the same. “You’re warm.” 

A purr grows in your chest and you snuggle into her even more. 

“Ow,” Josie mumbles, not a minute later. You can practically hear the pout in her voice. “And heavy.” 

You don’t move. She smells really, really good. Underneath the lake water and wet grass, she smells like every good thing you’ve ever wanted, like all your dreams wrapped up into one person. 

“Hope,” Josie calls out against you again. “I can’t breathe.” 

You grunt and move off of her, but not a lot. Just enough to rest your head on her lap. The urge to sleep comes back. You’re so much more tired than you originally thought. 

“Wait.” You lift your head up, thinking that you’ve screwed up again. Josie blinks a couple of times. “Now I’m cold.” 

You straighten up, your snout giving a small twitch. You wonder if Josie would scratch it if you tried to ask. 

“Do you think I can lay on top of you instead?” she asks, eyes focused down on the blankets. She seems...shy. 

Well, she has no reason to be. That sounds like a great idea. 

You dip your muzzle down in another nod. Sure. You can be whatever she needs you to be. 

You blow air through your nose and nudge her with your side, rolling around until your stomach is on display. You feel a little embarrassed and weak like this, such an easy target to whatever might walk in, but when Josie leans down and presses her body against yours, you forget all about it. 

“So fluffy...” 

You pretend not to hear the words, adjusting your head. You’ve always found it hard to lay on your back in your wolf form, but this time is different. 

Josie sighs into your neck, two clumps of white fur balled tightly in her hands as she cuddles into you like her life depends on it. Her breaths come in hot, little puffs of air, skin coming even hotter, or maybe that’s just your own body heat. 

You don’t know quite how it happens, but sometime after she settles into you and you into her, the both of you fall asleep. 

When you wake up, it’s darker than it had been before. Most of the candles have either been blown out or have run their course, and the steady drip of rain outside the cave resounds dully in your ears. 

You shift and move around a bit, finding that you’re still underneath Josie, somehow. Josie, who is also waking up. 

“Erijagdnj,” she grumbles sleepily, stretching her arms out. You blink, not knowing if that was English or not. Maybe you’re still asleep.   


Then—

“What time is it?” the siphoner asks, mouthing somewhere at your neck. She’s stopped trying to get up, instead choosing to hide her face under your jaw. 

You don’t know what time it is, you realize. You should check. 

Still struggling to open your eyes, you reach your hand out for your phone—

Wait. Your _phone_. Damn it. You left it in that one tree outside. And...

Your hand. Your _hand_. Oh no. No. _No_. 

Blue, _human_ eyes widening, you brace your fingers behind Josie’s head and force her to stay buried in the crook of your neck. Something tells you she would have stayed there anyway, because she doesn’t even move or make a noise in protest. 

Damn it. This is not how you wanted her to see you naked for the first time. With your face covered in dry dirt along with parts of your legs and arms. 

Ugh. 

“Don’t look,” you say, voice rough from disuse and sleep. “I’m...uh...” 

You glance down, just to check. Sure enough, you’re right. 

“Naked?” 

Josie tries to lift her head up, but you force it back down. “Is that a question?” she murmurs into your neck, obviously still half-asleep. “Can I be naked, too?” 

Your mouth runs dry. “No.” Maybe you can sneak out from under her and get your clothes before she wakes up? “Only one of us can. Go back to sleep.” 

“‘Kay,” Josie agrees, and then she’s out. You sigh and disentangle yourself from her, face burning red. God. 

This is so fucking embarrassing. No. You can recover from this. She probably didn’t see anything, and if she did, she’ll probably think it was a dream later. Right? 

Right. 

You quickly exit the cave and find the tree you put your clothes in. When you check your phone, you see that it’s a little past midnight. You suddenly hate yourself for leaving Josie alone in a fucking cave so late at night. 

When you make it back to the cave, Josie is still asleep. You don’t want to wake her, but you know that sleeping on the ground can’t be comfortable, even if she has a couple of blankets to cushion her. 

You make a compromise. You’ll eat some of the things Josie brought, put all the food and candles back into the basket, and then you’ll wake her up. 

“Hey,” you whisper, after you’re done. You run your calloused fingers through her hair, trying to get her to stir. “Wake up.” 

You notice that she’s shivering. You hadn’t realized it until now, but it’s kind of cold. Even though she’s wearing several layers, the skin you can see of her ankles are covered in goosebumps. Her face looks a little too pale for your liking as well. 

After the hundredth time of shaking her to get her to wake up, Josie finally does. 

“Goodmorning,” she yawns, covering her mouth. She looks like a cat. A cute, little cat. You want to swoop her up in her arms and carry her back to the school yourself, but that would be a little bit much, you think. 

“I...” Is it morning? Technically, maybe. “Sure,” you end up saying, chuckling underneath your breath. Josie smiles and tries to snuggle back into her blanket. You know that she really needs to sleep. She barely got any this past week with all her tests and projects. 

“You’re shivering,” you comment, tapping your fingers along Josie’s sides. She giggles and finally sits up, clearing her bleary eyes. “It’s still early. Wanna move things to my room?” 

Josie looks at you, then, a little wide-eyed, cheeks a little flushed. 

Oh.

“Not like that,” you hurry to clarify, but Josie scoots into your personal space and suddenly you have no idea how you meant it. 

“I would be fine with it, you know,” she tells you, voice breathy and a new kind of low. Her eyelids are heavy, the lashes of them dark and long as she flutters them. “If you meant it like that.” 

“Oh. Okay,” you choke out, having a hard time swallowing, and having an equally hard time trying not to show it. “Good to know.” 

Josie bursts out laughing. You don’t find it funny at all. Damn it. You’ve been dating for a month. You need to get over this awkward phase of yours. 

“Hope,” Josie wheezes through her laughter. You roll your eyes and stand up, the picnic basket in your hand. She chases after you as you leave her behind. “Oh, come on. I’m just messing with you.” 

You and Josie agree to separate at the school to take showers in your own rooms, before she’ll return to yours in half an hour. 

When you get to your room, you head straight for the bathroom. You shower in record time, before cleaning up your room and doing your bed, just to tidy things up for Josie. You don’t want her to think you’re filthy or something. 

While you’re organizing your desk, you stumble upon a paper that appears to be a list of ingredients. 

1\. 5 Tablespoons of Natural Honey

2\. 3 One-Inch Pieces of Bloodwood Tree Bark

3\. Six Purple Sunflower Seeds

4\. One Tablespoon of Reindeer Milk

5\. 4 Inches of Shedded Rattlesnake Skin

6\. 2 Eucalyptus Petals

7\. One Lamb’s Ear

8\. 3 Teaspoons of Rainwater

9\. 2 Pale-Tipped Killdeer Feathers

10\. One handful of Ash Grass

You throw it away. 

“Thank you for tonight,” you tell Josie, later, when you’re both sitting in your bed. Her head is resting lightly on your shoulder, fingers playing with the hem of your tank top. “It meant a lot to me.” 

“Me, too,” Josie murmurs, but she doesn’t explain. The room dissolves into silence. For a second, you wonder what would happen if you confessed your love for her. 

You shake your head at yourself and choose not to. The first time had not gone so well. 

“How does it feel?” Josie asks, out of nowhere. You sit up at the question, surprised. The lights in the room are still on, so you can see the look on her face clearly. Yet, you can’t interpret it at all. 

“What do you mean?” When she doesn’t immediately answer, you tighten your hold on her hip to get her attention, from where your arm is wrapped around her waist. She places her hand on top of your own and squeezes back. 

“To be a wolf?” she adds, voice so quiet that you doubt whether you really heard it at all. She twists around in your arms and lets her eyes drop to the triangle mark on your neck. 

You don’t even think she noticed. 

“Honestly, I...” you trail off, unsure how to go about this. 

Would she understand, if you said that it feels impossible, yet too easy all at once? Would she understand, if you said that you have never felt more relaxed, more on edge, than as a wolf? 

Instead, you tell her about the scent of rain and pine, about the sting of venom and claws. You tell her about the moon, and you tell her _more_ when she doesn’t tease you for it. After that, telling her what it feels like to run with the wind and breathe with the air around you is easy. 

You even tell her about your run-in with the bear and his honey, _and_ about the time you got caught in a tree because you wanted to see how high you could jump. 

“I made friends with an owl once,” you say, bumping your shoulders with Josie, a playful twinkle in your eye, what must be hours later. “Until I ate him, I mean.” 

“_Hope_.” 

“Kidding.”

—

Monday morning, you make it to the dining hall early. You grab a cup of orange juice and a granola bar, sitting down at your usual table. Your eyes wander the room in search of Josie. You find her across the hall, standing with Penelope Park. 

You can distantly remember the siphoner mentioning that Penelope had wanted to apologize and stay friends with her. You watch them secretly, the rim of your cup resting against your bottom lip. It’s trembling. 

Maybe your staring hadn’t been as secretive as you thought, because Josie suddenly turns towards you and your eyes meet in a flash of barely-there yellow. You smile back at her as she gives you a small wave and blows a kiss in your direction. 

Your orange juice goes down your throat more easily than it ever has before. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading this and sticking with me through the whole story :) i really appreciate all the kudos, comments, and compliments, they really helped me finish the story and it really means so much to me haha


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